HoO Read Percy Jackson's Books:The Lightning Thief
by supergabbi18
Summary: Jason, Piper, Leo, Annabeth, Rachel, and Grover read The Lightning Thief. My First FanFic. Rated T because I'm Paranoid  should be rated K but oh, well.
1. Getting The Book

**A/N: Hi everybody! This is my first FanFic so please don't flame. This is basically where Jason, Leo, Piper, Annabeth, Grover, and Rachel read the Percy Jackson books. Tell me in the Reviews if there is anyone I should add or if there is anything you would change. By the way, I don't have a beta reader so there could be a lot of mistakes. Please review!**

"Please, Annabeth," Leo begged. He was on his way to the mess hall with Annabeth, Jason, and Piper. He had been begging to know about Percy Jackson ever since he got back from his quest with Jason and Piper.

"Leo, I really don't want to right now," said Annabeth. She sighed, she missed Percy so much. She wished she could have hugged him one more time.

When they got to the mess hall they all went to their separate tables. At the end of the meal Rachel and Grover ran up to them. Rachel was holding a large stack of books.

"Annabeth! Look what we have!" Rachel exclaimed, completely beaming. Annabeth looked at the stack of books. She caught her breath. The one on tops title was _The Lightning Thief._

"Where did you find these?" she asked Rachel.

"Well I had to get a book for school, and these were on display at the front. They were bestsellers! We have to read them!" Rachel exclaimed.

"Ummm… What are they?" Jason asked, looking confused.

"They are about Percy's quests." said Grover.

A look of excitement came over Leo's face. "What are we waiting for? Let's go!" he said.

Annabeth nodded in agreement. "We should read in Percy's cabin." The others followed her. She sat down on Percy's bunk and sighed. The others sat on the floor or on another bed.

"I'll read first," she said finally.

"What's the book called?" Piper asked.

"_The Lightning Thief_." Annabeth replied. "Chapter one: **I Accidently Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher" **


	2. I Accidently Vaporize My PreAlgebra Tea

**A/N: Happy Monday Everyone! In one of the reviews, someone said I should flash them to Olympus. I may do this for one of the books. Tell me in the reviews if I should do this and if so which book should I do it in. I do plan on continuing through with all the books no matter how long it takes me. Thanks to jlmill9 for letting me copy the book from their FanFic. Another thing, I was surprised how many people read the first chapter within the hour it was uploaded. Thanks to you guys for reading! Please Review!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Percy Jackson and the Olympian books or characters.**

Chapter 1

I ACCIDENTLY VAPORIZE MY PRE-ALGEBRA TEACHER

**"I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher,"** Annabeth read.

"Interesting title," Piper noted.

"Very," said Leo.

**Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.**

All the half-bloods nodded.

"I'm glad I'm not a half-blood," Rachel and Grover said together. All the others laughed.

**If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is:**

"The world is coming to an end! Percy is giving advice!" Grover joked.

Annabeth laughed, but she felt sad again. It wasn't the same without her Seaweed Brain.

**close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.**

"Exactly," said Annabeth, "the less you know the better."

"Why?" Leo asked.

"The more you know about your half-blood life, the easier it is for monsters to find you," explained Annabeth.

**Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.**

Annabeth looked grim. She didn't want to think about getting killed in painful, nasty ways.

**If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.**** But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before**_**they**___**sense it too, and they'll come for you.**

**Don't say I didn't warn you.**

**My name is Percy Jackson.**

Annabeth sighed. She was beginning to realize how hard it would be to read about Percy. Piper walked over to her and put her arm around her. Annabeth took a deep breath and continued to read.

**I'm twelve years old. Until a**_**few**___**months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a****private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.**

"Was Percy a troubled kid?" Leo asked, jokingly.

Annabeth laughed, "You could say that."

**Am I a troubled kid?**

**Yeah. You could say that.**

Everyone laughed.

**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.**

**I know—it sounds like torture.**

"It actually sounds really fun," Annabeth said.

"Well, that's because you're smart. We however are not," Leo said.

"Who is _we_?" asked Piper, looking offended.

"Me and Percy, duh." Leo said getting a punch from Piper.

**Most Yancy field trips were.**

**But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.**

"That name sounds familiar," noted Annabeth.

**Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.**

"I wish we had a teacher like that at the Wilderness school," said Leo.

**I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.**

**Boy, was I wrong.**

**See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.**

"What was he aiming for then?" asked Jason. Everyone laughed.

"I don't know," said Grover.

**And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.**

**This trip, I was determined to be good.**

**All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover**

"It's good to know I was his best friend back then," Grover said.

**in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.**

Annabeth narrowed her eyes.

"Ew," said Piper, Rachel, Leo and Jason.

"What a jerk," Annabeth said angrily.

Grover just nodded.

**Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.**

"Glad to know he thinks of me that way," huffed Grover.

Everyone just laughed.

"He thinks your awesome now," reassured Annabeth.

**He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

"Way to blow your cover," said Annabeth.

"But it was Enchilada day!" exclaimed Grover.

"That's a terrible excuse," commented Jason.

**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.**

**"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.**

**Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

**He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.**

**"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.**

**"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."**

**Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there.**

"He would deck a girl?" asked Piper.

"No," Grover said, confusing Piper.

**In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.**

**Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.**

**He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.**

**It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.**

**He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a**_**stele,**___**for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

**Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.**

"Was it because of a certain person?" mused Annabeth.

"It wasn't because of Percy," Grover said.

**From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn.**

"Not quite," said Jason.

**She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.**

**One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

"Seriously?" Jason asked.

Grover nodded sheepishly. Annabeth shook her head at him.

**Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.**

**Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you**_**shut up**_**?"**

**It came out louder than I meant it to.**

**The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.**

**"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"**

"Busted," said Leo quietly.

Piper punched him. "Shut up!"

"Yes ma'am."

**My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."**

**Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?**

**I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"**

Everyone shuddered.

**"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.**

Annabeth shook her head, "He needs to try harder," she said.

**"And he**_**did**___**this because ..."**

**"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god,**

"God?" everyone exclaimed.

**and—"**

**"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

**"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead.**

"How do you confuse a god with a rock?" asked Leo.

Everyone else just shrugged.

**And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

**"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

**"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."**

**Some snickers from the group.**

"Why did they laugh?" asked Jason, "He got it right!"

**Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"**

**"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

"Because it is his life," mumbled Jason. Piper nodded in agreement.

**"Busted," Grover muttered.**

**"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.**

**At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.**

**I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

**"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

**The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.**

**Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."**

**I knew that was coming.**

**I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

**Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

"Because they have," said Annabeth to herself.

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

"How do his studies apply to it, anyways?" Leo questioned.

Piper punched him. "It is his life, you doofus!"

**"Oh."**

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."**

**I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.**

**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever**_**lived,**___**and their mother, and what god they worshipped.**

**But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be**_**as good;**___**he expected me to be**_**better.**___**And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.**

**I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

"He probably was," Grover said sadly.

**He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.**

**The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.**

"I wonder why dad is angry?" mused Jason.

"You'll find out soon," replied Grover.

**We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

**Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

**Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from**_**that**___**school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

**Detention?" Grover asked.**

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

"Of course you're not," Annabeth said, "but that's what's great about you."

"That he's stupid?" Leo asked.

"No! That he knows he's not perfect."

"Oh,"

**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"**

"Wow," said Jason, "really deep, profound thought there."

Grover blushed sheepishly.

**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

**I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**

**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

"She's such a jerk!" exclaimed Rachel.

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

Everyone laughed.

"What?" Grover said, "It was true." Which made them all begin to laugh again. Once everyone was quiet Annabeth began to read again.

**I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.**

"A wave." Piper mused.  
>"What?" Leo asked.<p>

"Well he was a son of Poseidon," Annabeth commented.

**I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"**

**Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.**

**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—the water—"**

**"—like it grabbed her—"**

**I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

**As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

Jason began to think about who this monster of a teacher could be. _A fury, _Jason thought, _maybe. Just maybe._

**"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

"No!" Leo yelled, bolting from where he was sitting, "you never guess your punishment!"

Once he saw everyone staring at him he slowly sat down.

**That wasn't the right thing to say.**

**"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me.**_**I**___**pushed her."**

**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.**

"She should," Grover mumbled.

**She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

**"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—**_**will**_—**stay—here."**

**Grover looked at me desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

**"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "**_**Now**_**."**

**Nancy Bobofit smirked.**

**I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.**

"Must have been so scary," Rachel said, making the rest of them laugh.

_It feels good to laugh,_ Annabeth thought.

**Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

**How'd she get there so fast?**

"He's gonna think he's hallucinating or something like that," commented Rachel.

**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

**I wasn't so sure.**

**I went after Mrs. Dodds.**

**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

"Oh," Annabeth said, triumphantly.

"What?" asked Jason.

"Nothing, I just realized who Mr. Brunner was." Annabeth said.

"Who?" asked Leo, Piper, Jason, and Rachel.

"You'll just have to find out." And with that she began to read again.

**I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.**

**Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

**But apparently that wasn't the plan.**

**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.**

**Except for us, the gallery was empty.**

**Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

**Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

"Get away with what?" asked Piper, but she never got an answer.

**The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

**I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

**Thunder shook the building.**

**"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

**I didn't know what she was talking about.**

**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.**** Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on**_**Tom Sawyer**___**from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.**

"Yes, that must be it," Annabeth said, giggling.

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed.**

**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.**

"It's a fury!" exclaimed Jason.

**Then things got even stranger.**

**Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

"What ho? Really?" asked Rachel.

**Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.**

**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

"That's… So… AWESOME!" exclaimed Leo

**Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

**My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

**She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

"She can drop the 'honey' thing now," said Grover.

**And she flew straight at me.**

**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

"Yes because that's natural for everyone," said Piper, sarcastically.

**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water.**_**Hisss!**_** Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

**I was alone.**

**There was a ballpoint pen in my hand. Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

**My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

"Magic Mushrooms?" asked Jason.

"It's just Percy, being Percy," said Rachel.

**Had I imagined the whole thing?**

**I went back outside.**

**It had started to rain.**

**Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

**I said, "Who?"**

**"Our**_**teacher.**_ **Duh!"**

**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.**

**She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

**I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.**

**He said, "Who?"**** But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

"You're a terrible liar," Rachel noted.

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."**

**Thunder boomed overhead.**

**I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

**I went over to him.**

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson.**

Everyone chuckled at that.

**I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.**

**"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

**He stared at me blankly. "Who?"**

**"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."**

**He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

"That's the end of the chapter," Annabeth said. "We'll just go in order."

She handed the book to Piper "**Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death**" Piper read.


	3. Three Old Ladies Knit The Socks of Death

**A/N: Hey y'all! (I developed a Southern Accent!) Sorry for not updating earlier I've been very busy (Oh, the lives of social middle schoolers,). Anyway, I'm thinking about flashing everyone to Olympus for the second book, what do you guys think? Thanks for reading everyone! Review!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians and all of the characters, even though I wish I did.**

Chapter 2

THREE OLD LADIES KNIT THE SOCKS OF DEATH

"**Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death," **Piper read.

Grover shivered.

_The Fates, _Jason immediately thought. He didn't say anything though, because he feared he may be right.

**I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly.**

**This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.**

"That would be irritating," Piper said.

"What?" Jason asked.

"People acting like something never happened when it really did," Piper said, it bothered her that the students would act like that.

"That was just the mist tricking them," Grover said,

"Oh," Piper said, "It still would've irritated me."

**Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.**

Everyone laughed.

"Well that's because you are Seaweed Brain," Annabeth joked.

**It got so I almost believed them—Mrs. Dodds had never existed.**

**Almost.**

**But Grover couldn't fool me.**

"Because Grover is a terrible liar," Leo said.

Grover looked down sheepishly, and everyone laughed.

**When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, and then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.**

**Something was going on. Something**_**had**___**happened at the museum.**

"He's a bit slow," Leo said, cautiously, not wanting to offend Annabeth.

Grover, Annabeth, and Rachel all nodded and laughed.

**I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.**

All the demigods shivered.

**The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.**

"Why are the gods so upset?" Piper asked.

"You'll find out soon enough," Annabeth replied.

**I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs.**

"Poor Percy," Jason said.

"He should try harder," Annabeth said, frowning.

"Why?" Piper asked, "He's dyslexic. The words practically fly off the page."

"So am I," Annabeth argued. Piper began to read not having a comeback for that."

**I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.**

Everyone frowned, but no one said anything.

**Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.**

Annabeth began, to snicker.

"What?" Leo asked.

"A sot, is a drunkard," she replied, and everyone laughed.

**The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.**

**Fine, I told myself. Just fine.**

**I was homesick.**

"Homesick?" Piper asked.

"He probably missed his mom," Grover answered. Leo began to snicker.

"His mom's awesome," Annabeth and Grover said.

**I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.**

"Paul plays poker?" Rachel asked, confused.

Annabeth and Grover shook their heads. "This was before Paul," Grover said, frowning. Gabe was really smelly and gross.

**And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view** **of the woods outside my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend,**

Grover smiled, "Thanks Perce."

**even if he was a little strange.**

Grover's smile faded, "Hey!"

Everyone laughed.

**I worried how he'd survive next year without me.**

**I'd miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.**

**As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for.**

"At least he studied," sighed Annabeth.

**I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him. **

**The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the**_**Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology**___**across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.**

"It's quite easy actually," Jason said, while everyone stared at him. When he realized what he said he goes, "Oh, for Romans I mean."

**I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.**

**I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes.**_**I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.**_

**I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.**

**I'd never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.**

"Aww, Percy wanted to impress his teacher," Rachel said teasingly.

Annabeth smiled at the fact that he actually tried.

**I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.**

**I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said,**

"Why are you talking to Mr. Brunner?" Leo asked, looking confused.

"He's probably doing the same thing as Percy, asking a question," Piper suggested.

_**"...**_ **worried about Percy, sir."**

**I froze.**

**I'm not usually an eavesdropper,**

"What?" Rachel asked, "He eavesdrops all the time."

"Only on important conversations," Annabeth said.

**but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.**

**I inched closer.**

**"... alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the**_**school**_**! Now that we know for sure, and**_**they**___**know too—"**

**"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."**

**"But he may not have time. The summer solstice dead line—****"**

**"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."**

"I wondered if it could've been solved without Percy," pondered Grover.

**"Sir, he**_**saw**___**her..."**

**"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."**

**"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."**

"Again?" Jason asked.

Grover just nodded glumly.

**"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"**

**The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.**

**Mr. Brunner went silent.**

**My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.**

**A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.**

**I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.**

**A few seconds later I heard a slow**_**clop-clop-clop,**___**like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, and then moved on.**

**A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.**

**Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."**

**"Mine neither," Grover said. "But I could have sworn ..."**

**"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."**

**"Don't remind me."**

"I've taken to many finals," Grover said.

**The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.**

**I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.**

**Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.**

**Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.**

**"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"**

**I didn't answer.**

**"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"**

**"Just... tired."**

**I turned so he couldn't read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.**

"Didn't work," Grover said, wishing he would've noticed.

**I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.**

**But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.**

**The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam,**

"That would even make me tired," Rachel said.

**my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.**

**For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.**

**"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best."**

**His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.**

"I'm gonna get her," muttered Annabeth.

"She's not worth it," Grover said.

**I mumbled, "Okay, sir."**

**"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."**

**My eyes stung.**

_He has a big heart, _Piper thought. She smiled, and everyone looked at her curiously.

"Nothing," she said.

**Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.**

**"Right," I said, trembling.**

**"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"**

"He's terrible at explaining things." Jason noted.

**"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."**

**"Percy—"**

**But I was already gone.**

**On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.**

**The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were**_**rich**___**juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.**

"I wouldn't say nobodies," Leo said.

**They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.**

**What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.**

**"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."**

**They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.**

**The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.**

**During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.**

"That would be kinda creepy," Piper said.

**Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.**

**Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.**

**I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"**

Everyone laughed.

"Probably gave you a heart attack," Annabeth said, giggling.

**Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"**

**I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.**

**Grover's eye twitched. "How much**_**did**___**you hear?"**

**"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"**

"Oh, nothing really just another day in your life where people will want to incinerate you," Grover said, everyone stared at him.

**He winced. "Look, Percy ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers …"**

"To bad it wasn't a hallucination," Jason said, grimly.

**"Grover—"**

**"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and ..."**

**"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."**

Everyone laughed and nodded.

**His ears turned pink.**

**From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.**

**The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:**

"Why is it in fancy script, anyways?" Rachel asked.

"Mr.D enjoys watching dyslexic demigods read it," Grover said.

_**Grover Underwood**_

_**Keeper**_

_**Half-Blood Hill**_

_**Long Island, New York**_

_**(800)**_ _**009-0009**_

**"What's Half—"**

**"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."**

**My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.**

**"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."**

**He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."**

**"Why would I need you?"**

**It came out harsher than I meant it to.**

**Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."**

**I stared at him.**

**All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended**_**me.**_

"Thanks Perce," Grover said.

**"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting me from?"**

**There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.**

"Ominous," Piper said.

**The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.**

**After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.**

**We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.**

**The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood red cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice**_**.**___**There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.**

"_Di immortales," _Jason said.

"What?" Piper and Leo asked.

"It's them," he said and motioned for Piper to read.

**I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.**

**All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.**

**The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.**

**I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.**

**"Grover?" I said. "Hey, man—"**

**"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"**

**"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"**

"Not funny," Annabeth and Jason said.

**"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."**

**The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.**

**"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."**

**"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."**

**"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.**

**Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that**_**snip**___**across four lanes of traffic.**

Everyone flinched.

"And he's still alive?" Jason asked, obviously appalled. Annabeth nodded.

**Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.**

**At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.**

**The passengers cheered.**

**"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"**

**Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.**

**Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.**

**"Grover?"**

**"Yeah?"**

**"What are you not telling me?"**

"A lot," Leo said.

**He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"**

**"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs. Dodds, are they?"**

"They're way worse," Piper said.

**His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."**

**"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."**

**He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.**

**He said, "You saw her snip the cord."**

**"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.**

**"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."**

"What happened last time?" Piper asked

Grover looked grim and said, "You'll find out.

**"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."**

**This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.**

**"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.**

**No answer.**

**"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"**

"Yes," Annabeth said.

"It does?" Leo asked, "How is he still alive.

Annabeth shrugged. "Fate."

**He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.**

"That's the end of the chapter," she said and passed the book to Jason.


	4. Grover Unexpectedly Looses His Pants

**A/N: I know you probably all hate me for not updating for a while. I don't have very much time to do this so… Anyways, someone gave me constructive criticism (thanks, no one ever does that) and told me that Jason was guessing things to accurately, so that's one of the things I'm going to change. I want to add more characters when I send them to Olympus so tell me in the reviews what characters I should add. Thanks to jlmill9 for letting me copy and paste out of his/her story. Please tell all your friends that I'm the best (just kidding, please don't do that) and please, please, please, PLEASE Review. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians or Heroes of Olympus**

"**Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants**" Jason read.

Grover just blushed.

Leo laughed, "It doesn't say that."

"Yeah it does," Jason said, showing it to Leo.

**Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.**

"Rude!" Piper exclaimed.

"Why did he do that?" Rachel asked Grover.

The satyr shrugged "I don't know."

**I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to be sixth grade?"**

"Okay, that would be creepy," Annabeth said.

"I probably would've left him, too," Jason said.

"I thought he was going to die!" Grover said, trying to defend himself.

**Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.**

**"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.**

**A word about my mother, before you meet her.**

"She's awesome!" Annabeth, Rachel and Grover said simultaneously.

"You've all met her?" Leo asked.

They nodded.

**Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.**

"She did have pretty rotten luck," Annabeth said, sadly.

**Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.**

_She did have pretty rotten luck, _everyone thought to themselves.

**The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.**

**I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn't like to talk about him because**_** it**___**makes her sad. She has no pictures.**

**See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.**

**Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.**

"Not a lie," Annabeth said.

"But not the whole truth," Piper finished.

**She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.**

"Understatement," Rachel said, while everyone laughed.

**Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him,**

"Gabe was smelly," Grover commented, wrinkling his nose.

"You've met Gabe?" Annabeth asked.

"No, but trust me I could smell him. He reeked of human," Grover said. Leo and Piper looked at him oddly while Jason kept reading.

**then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nick named him Smelly Gabe. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.**

Everyone looked disgusted.

"Why did she marry him?" Piper asked.

Grover just shook his head and motioned for Jason to keep reading.

**Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along ... well, when I came home is a good example.**

**I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.**

"Eww," All the girls said looking a bit green.

**Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."**

**"Where's my mom?"**

**"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"**

"He asked him for money?" Annabeth said, looking a bit angry.

"Jerk," Rachel and Piper said, and everyone nodded in agreement.

**That was it. No**_**Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?**_

**Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.**

"This guy makes me want to barf," Leo said, while Jason made a face.

**He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.**

"I'm gonna beat him up," Piper and Annabeth said in unison.

Everyone scooted a little bit farther away from them.

**"I don't have any cash," I told him.**

**He raised a greasy eyebrow.**

**Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.**

Grover snorted.

Everyone looked at him oddly. "Nothing," He said, still laughing.

**"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. "Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"**

**Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."**

"Someone who actually is nice to Percy!" Annabeth said throwing her hands up in the air.

**"Am I**_**right**_**?**_**"**___**Gabe repeated.**

**Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.**

"Ew." Piper said, she felt bad for Percy. That he had to live with that for most of his life.

**"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."**

**"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"**

**I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.**

**I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.**

**Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds,**

**or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.**

**But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.**

"Oh great," Jason said, he didn't know why but he felt like he could relate to Percy.

**Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"**

**She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.**

**My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room.**

"Aww, that's really sweet," Piper said, smiling.

"She is pretty great though," Annabeth said, while Grover and Rachel nodded in agreement.

**Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad.**

**I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.**

**"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"**

**Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.**

"I want a bag of free samples!" Leo said.

**We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?**

**I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.**

"Aren't we all always happy to see her?" Annabeth asked.

Grover and Rachel nodded and grinned.

**From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"**

**I gritted my teeth.**

Just like Everyone was doing right now.

**My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.**

"She's happy with Paul though," Annabeth said.

"Being married to a millionaire isn't a walk in the park," Rachel said with a grimace.

**For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself.**

**I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.**

**Until that trip to the museum ...**

**"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"**

**"No, Mom."**

"Liar," Jason said.

**I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.**

"She would understand though. I almost positive," Piper said.

**She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.**

**"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."**

**My eyes widened. "Montauk?"**

**"Three nights—same cabin."**

**"When?"**

**She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."**

**I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.**

**Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"**

**I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.**

"Good," Piper and Jason said with a solid nod.

**"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."**

**Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"**

**"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."**

**"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your step father is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."**

**Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip ... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"**

"Jerk," everyone said, once again.

**"Yes, honey," my mother said.**

**"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."**

Grover grinned.

"The car doesn't make it does it?" Leo asked. Grover just shook his head.

"You'll have to find out," Grover said, and motioned for Jason to read.

**"We'll be very careful."**

**Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip ... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."**

"He doesn't need to apologize!" Jason and Piper exclaimed.

**Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.**

"Do it!" Leo said.

**But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.**

**Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?**

**"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."**

**Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.**

**"Yeah, whatever," he decided.**

**He went back to his game.**

**"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"**

**For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.**

**But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.**

**An hour later we were ready to leave.**

**Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.**

**"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."**

"Like he'd be the one driving," Piper, Jason and Annabeth said in unison.

**Like I'd be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.**

**Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stair case as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.**

"Wizard!" Leo yelled, bolting from his chair. When everyone looked at him oddly he sat back down.

**I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.**

**Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets,**

Annabeth shivered.

**and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.**

"That won't bother him," Annabeth said.

**I loved the place.**

**We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.**

**As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.**

**We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.**

"What's with all the blue foods?" Leo asked.

Jason laughed and continued to read.

**I guess I should explain the blue food.**

**See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.**

"OH Percy's is more than a streak," Rachel said, and she and Annabeth laughed.

**When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.**

**Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.**

**"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."**

"Oh so that's what he looks like," Leo and Jason said. Annabeth nodded.

**Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."**

"He's very proud of him," Annabeth said leaning back on the wall.

**I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.**

**"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean ... when he left?"**

**She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."**

**"But... he knew me as a baby."**

**"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."**

**I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember ... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.**

**I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me...**

**I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.**

Annabeth growled at the mention of Gabe.

**"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"**

**She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.**

**"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think ... I think we'll have to do something."**

**"Because you don't want me around?"**

"Percy!"Annabeth yelled.

"That was mean!" Piper said.

**I regretted the words as soon as they were out.**

"Good," Annabeth and Piper said.

**My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I**_**have**___**to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."**

**Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.**

**"Because I'm not normal," I said.**

**"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."**

**"Safe from what?"**

**She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.**

**During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.**

"That's kinda creepy," Jason said with a shiver.

**Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.**

"Dude, Percy's a total beast!" Leo said.

"What?" Jason asked.

"Beast is a name for a totally awesome person," Leo stated, while Piper shook her head at him.

**In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.**

**I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.**

**"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."**

**"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"**

**"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."**

**My head was spinning. Why would my dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?**

**"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying good-bye to you for good."**

**"For good? But if it's only a summer camp ..."**

**She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.**

**That night I had a vivid dream.**

"Demigod dreams stink," Jason said.

Everyone nodded.

**It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf.**

_What are Zeus and Poseidon fighting about? _Jason thought.

**The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagles wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder. I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed,**_**No!**_

**I woke with a start.**

**Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.**

**With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."**

**I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.**

**Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.**

**My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.**

**Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.**

"Who was he then?" Leo asked.

**"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"**

**My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.**

**"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"**

**I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.**

_**"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!"**___**he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you**_**tell**___**her?"**

"No!" Leo said.

**I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—**

"Didn't someone tell you to always wear your pants?" Jason joked.

"No, my mama goat let me run around pantless," He replied, playing along.

Everyone laughed.

**and where his legs should be ... where his legs should be ...**

**My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before:**_**"Percy.**___**Tell me**_**now**_**!"**

**I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.**

**She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you.**_**Go**_**!**_**"**_

**Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.**

"Shaggy hindquarters?" Grover said, whilst (_**A/N:I love the word whilst)**_everyone laughed.

**Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**

"Real dramatic there Perce," Grover said.

Jason handed the book to Leo. "Your turn," he said.

"Yes," said Leo excitedly, "**My Mother Teaches Me BullFighting.**"


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:This is just an Author's Note but please read anyway. **

**I know you all want to kill me right now for not updating for over a month. I need someone's help. **

**With school getting so busy I won't always be able to update. I would like someone who could just write every other chapter for me, just till summer which is only 6-ish weeks away. You would get full credit of course. Just Private Message Me if you would like to help. Please I need someone… Anyone.**

**I'm working on finishing my next chapter. Thanks for reading everyone.**


	6. My Mother Teaches Me Bull fighting

**A/N: Hola Mi Amigos (and amigas!)!**

**Please Disregard my last author's note. I was panicking when I wrote that.**

**I know you all hate me for taking so long to update last time. If it helps I hate you too! (Just kidding, I love you all dearly.)**

**Anyways, I need ideas for my story and all the stories that come after it (i.e. and idea for when they read the next books) just PM me. I'll most likely answer within a week or two. If you haven't already read my authors note from last chapter.**

**Make sure and answer the poll on my profile. (It would help my writing a lot).Please Review with suggestions or just comments. Thanks for Reading!**

**Oh, and thanks to jlmill9 for letting me copy out of his/her story.**

**Oh, and if you go on Amazon you can buy my friends book that was recently published. It's called **_**Murder in Siberia.**_** It's amazing I've read it many times and it is definitely worth your time and money.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians or The Heroes of Olympus.**

"**My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting," **Leo read.

Annabeth and Grover gasped in realization. "I always wondered how he did that," Annabeth said.

"Did What?" Leo asked.

Piper hit him. "We are obviously going to find out in this chapter.

**We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the wind shield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.**

**Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants.**

Everyone laughed.

"Why would I wear shag-carpet pants?" Grover demanded.

Annabeth and Piper shrugged, "Why would anyone wear shag-carpet pants?" Piper asked.

**But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.**

"I think he just told me I smell," Grover grumbled.

**All I could think to say was, "So, you and my mom... know each other?"**

**Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."**

"That's not at all stalkerish," Leo said, trying to contain his laughter.

**"Watching me?"**

**"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I**_**am**___**your friend."**

**"Urn ... what**_**are**___**you, exactly?"**

**"That doesn't matter right now."**

**"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"**

"I'm starting to doubt this friendship thing we have going on," Grover said, with annoyance.

Annabeth laughed, "Your like his best friend!"

"Yeah I know," Grover said with a smile.

**Grover let out a sharp, throaty**_**"Blaa-ha-ha!"**_

**I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.**

**"Goat!" he cried.**

**"What?"**

**"I'm a**_**goat**___**from the waist down."**

**"You just said it didn't matter."**

"Good point," Jason said, while everyone laughed.

Grover turned bright red.

"Only Percy," Rachel said, while

_**"Blaa-ha-ha!**_ **There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"**

**"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like ... Mr. Brunner's myths?"**

"There he goes not believing me," Grover said, and everyone laughed.

**"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a**_**myth,**___**Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"**

**"So you**_**admit**___**there was a Mrs. Dodds!"**

**"Of course."**

**"Then why—"**

**"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."**

**"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?"**

**The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.**

**"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."**

**"Safety from what? Who's after me?"**

**"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."**

"Why is the Lord of the dead going after Percy?" Leo asked.

Annabeth and Grover gave each other knowing looks, but said nothing.

**"Grover!"**

**"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"**

**I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.**

**My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.**

"They're almost to camp!" said Piper.

"Yeah, unless they get blasted!" Leo exclaimed.

"You probably just jinxed them!" Piper yelled.

"Nuh-uh!"

"Shut it Leo!"

**"Where are we going?" I asked.**

**"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."**

**"The place you didn't want me to go."**

**"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."**

**"Because some old ladies cut yarn."**

**"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."**

Annabeth once again began to worry. "Was it his life cord? Or not?" she wondered aloud.

**"Whoa. You said 'you.'"**

"You did say you." Annabeth said.

**"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"**

**"You meant 'you.' As in**_**me.**_**"**

**"I meant**_**you,**___**like 'someone.' Not you,**_**you.**_**"**

"I'm confused." Leo said.

Everyone face palmed.

**"Boys!" my mom said.**

**She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.**

**"What was that?" I asked.**

**"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question.**

"Wow," Rachel said, "Even his mom ignores him." Everyone began to laugh.

**"Another mile. Please. Please. Please."**

**I didn't know where**_**there**___**was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.**

**Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really**_**hadn't**_**been human. She'd meant to kill me.**

Everyone, but Leo, face palmed.

"He's so slow sometimes," Annabeth said, while Grover and Rachel nodded in agreement.

**Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling**_**boom!,**___**and our car exploded.**

"My dad struck him with lightning!" Jason exclaimed, "But, why?"

"You'll see later," Grover said.

**I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.**

**I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."**

**"Percy!" my mom shouted.**

**"I'm okay..."**

**I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.**

**Lightning. That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!"**

**He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die!**

Everyone laughed at the random remark.

**Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.**

Everyone laughed even harder, while Grover turned beet red.

**"Percy," my mother said, "we have to ..." Her voice faltered.**

**I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.**

Annabeth's eyes widened, not realizing this would be in the books.

**I swallowed hard. "Who is—"**

**"Percy," my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."**

**My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.**

**"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Percy—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"**

_**"What?"**_

**Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.**

"Thalia's tree!" Annabeth exclaimed.

"Thalia was a tree?" Leo and Piper asked.

Annabeth nodded, "It will explain in the book."

**"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."**

**"Mom, you're coming too."**

"She can't," Rachel said, with a frown.

**Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.**

**"No!" I shouted. "You**_**are**___**coming with me. Help me carry Grover."**

**"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.**

**The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he**_**couldn't**___**be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns …**

"HE FOUGHT THE FREAKIN' MINOTAUR?" Jason exclaimed, suddenly standing up.

Piper, Leo, and Rachel gasped in surprise.

Leo didn't even wait for an answer to Jason's question. Instead, he kept reading.

**"He doesn't want**_**us**_**," my mother told me. "He wants**_**you.**___**Besides, I can't cross the property line."**

**"But..."**

**"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."**

**I got mad, then—mad at my mother, at Grover the goat,**

Everyone laughed quietly, while Grover blushed.

"I'm only part goat!" He said.

**at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.**

"Cause he is a bull," Piper said.

"No, he's only part bull," Annabeth joked.

Grover blushed furiously.

**I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom."**

**"I told you—"**

**"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."**

**I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.**

**Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.**

**Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of**_**Muscle Man**___**magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except under wear—**

Leo burst out laughing, "Why was he only wearing underwear?"

No one knew the answer, but they all burst out laughing, too.

**I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.**

**His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.**

**I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.**

"Sorry dude, It's real," said Jason.

**I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"**

**"Pasiphae's son," my mother said.**

"Smart mom," Piper said, intelligently.

Annabeth nodded.

**"I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."**

**"But he's the Min—"**

**"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."**

**The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.**

**I glanced behind me again.**

**The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.**

**"Food?" Grover moaned.**

**"Shhh," I told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"**

**"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."**

**As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.**

_**Not a scratch,**___**I remembered Gabe saying.**

"Whoops," Jason and Leo said together.

**Oops.**

Jason and Leo laughed, at having the same thought as Percy.

**"Percy," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"**

**"How do you know all this?"**

**"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."**

"Poor Percy's mom," Piper said, frowning.

**"Keeping me near you? But—"**

**Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.**

**He'd smelled us.**

**The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.**

"They should have just left me to rot," Grover said.

"Grover," Annabeth said, quietly, "Percy is your best friend. He would never leave you to the Minotaur."

Grover sniffed and nodded.

**The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.**

**My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."**

**I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.**

**He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.**

**The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing.**

**So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.**

**The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.**

**We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.**

**The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.**

Grover closed his eyes.

**"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any farther. Run!"**

**But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.**

**"Mom!"**

**She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"**

**Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply ... gone.**

Leo, Piper, Jason and Rachel gasped.

"NO!" Piper cried.

**"No!"**

**Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.**

Percy balled his fist, wishing that this store of energy could have come in time for him to save his mom.

**The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.**

**I couldn't allow that.**

**I stripped off my red rain jacket.**

**"Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"**

**"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.**

**I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all.**

"I really hate his ideas sometimes," Grover said.

**I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment.**

**But it didn't happen like that.**

"Of course it didn't," Annabeth rolled her eyes.

**The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.**

**Time slowed down.**

**My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.**

**How did I do that?**

"That's what we all want to know!" Leo said.

**I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.**

**The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.**

**The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.**

**Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tongue off.**

**"Food!" Grover moaned.**

**The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light,**

**and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—**_**snap!**_

**The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.**

"Holy canoli!" Leo cried.

Everyone looked at him oddly.

"My mommy wouldn't like it if I said 'holy crap!'"

**The monster charged.**

**Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.**

No one said anything. The tension in the air was palpable. **(A/N: vocab word!)**

**The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.**

**The monster was gone.**

"He killed the mi- bull-man?" Jason asked.

Annabeth nodded.

"With no experience at all?"

"Yep."

Jason was silent. He was very impressed.

**The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farm house. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to Grover—I wasn't going to let him go.**

**The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's.**

Everyone looked at Annabeth, who was deep in thought.

"A princess," she mused, with a smile.

"**They both looked down at me, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."**

"Oh, so you already knew he was the one," Leo said, raising an eyebrow.

Annabeth punched him while Piper slapped him.

**"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside."**

"That's the end of the chapter," Leo said.

"I guess I'll read next," Grover said taking the book. He was about to start reading when the door opened. A girl with black hair and electric blue eyes walked in.

"Thalia?"


	7. I Play Pinochle With a Horse

**A/N: This update has been speedy compared to the other ones. So, I decided to ask you guys a new question every week. So this week's question: What's your guys' favorite band?**

**You guys can ask questions about me if you want. Anyways, Enjoy. Review!**

**Check out my bio on my profile! Follow me on Instagramgabbi_Forsythe **

**(but tell me first so I can follow you too!)**

I PLAY PINOCHLE WITH A HORSE

"Thalia?" Annabeth asked, in surprise.

"Hey, everyone," Thalia said, "What are you up to?"

"Well," Grover explained, "Rachel found these books at one of the mortal bookstores." He handed her one of the books.

Thalia gasped. "Wait," she said, shocked, "These are about Percy."

Annabeth nodded. "We're reading all of them. You can join us if you want."

Thalia nodded and sat down on Percy's bunk with Annabeth and Thalia.

Annabeth quickly explained to Thalia what had happened so far in the book. It took at least half an hour because Leo kept interrupting saying things like "He's such a beast." Or "I wish I was there." Thalia and Piper punched him every time he interrupted.

Leo finally shut up, because he learned his lesson. Or because Thalia "accidently" punched him in the jaw, and he could no longer talk because his mouth was swollen.

After nursing his jaw, Leo told Rachel something that sounded like, "Reshh!"

Rachel took that as her cue to read.

"**I Play Pinochle With a Horse,"**Rachel read.

**I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.**

Grover blushed and everyone laughed.

"Ummm….. Should we be concerned that he dreams like that," Thalia asked.

Annabeth laughed and nodded.

**I must've woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The girl with curly blond hair hovered over me, smirking as she scraped drips off my chin with the spoon.**

"Aw... how cute!" Piper said. Annabeth blushed a deep red color.

**When she saw my eyes open, she asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"**

"You thought he would know what you were talking?" Thalia and Rachel questioned.

Annabeth shrugged, "I didn't know he was… ya know… Percy."

Rachel and Thalia laughed.

**I managed to croak, "What?"**

**She looked around, as if afraid someone would over hear. "What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!"**

**"I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I don't..."**

**Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with pudding.**

"That's one way to make guys shut up," Piper said.

Leo, Jason and Grover pretended to look offended, but they soon began to laugh because they knew deep down that Piper's statement was true.

**The next time I woke up, the girl was gone.**

"Ah... miss her already do you?" Thalia teased. Percy gave her a stiff punch at which she chuckled.

**A husky blond dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over me. He had blue eyes- at least a dozen of them- on his cheeks, his forehead, the backs of his hands.**

"He has way more than a dozen eyes!" Annabeth pointed out with a smirk.

**When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my legs, a pillow behind my neck. All that was great, but my mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest. My tongue was dry and nasty and every one of my teeth hurt.**

**On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry.**

**My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around it.**

**"Careful," a familiar voice said.**

**Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn't slept in a week.**

"Nope, it was only a few days," Grover said.

"That almost is a week," Annabeth informed him.

"It was only 6 days," Grover complained.

Annabeth rolled her eyes and shook her head.

**Under one arm, he cradled a shoe box. He was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD. Just plain old Grover, Not the goat boy.**

"He calls me goat-boy, too!" Grover exclaimed. Everyone laughed while Grover huffed.

**So maybe I'd had a nightmare. Maybe my mom was okay. We were still on vacation, and we'd stopped here at this big house for some reason. And...**

**"You saved my life," Grover said. "I... well, the least I could do ... I went back to the hill. I thought you might want this."**

**Reverently, he placed the shoe box in my lap.**

**Inside was a black-and-white bull's horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn't been a nightmare.**

"Does he still have the minotaur horn?" Leo asked.

"Yeah," Annabeth said.

"Beast." **(A/N: Sorry I use the word beast a lot. A bunch of kids at my school say it.)**

**"The Minotaur," I said.**

**"Urn, Percy, it isn't a good idea-"**

**"That's what they call him in the Greek myths, isn't it?" I demanded. "The Minotaur. Half man, half bull."**

**Grover shifted uncomfortably. "You've been out for two days. How much do you remember?"**

**"My mom. Is she really ..."**

**He looked down.**

"Poor Percy," Piper said, with a sad look on her face.

Jason felt a pang of jealousy. Everyone liked Percy. Everything here was always about Percy. And now Piper felt bad for him. Sure he lost his mom and everything. That doesn't mean he should feel bad for him. Suddenly Jason realized that he was being influenced by Gaea. His jealousy could make them lose the war. He suddenly was mad at himself for feeling so jealous.

**I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.**

**My mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.**

"He really did love his mom," Piper noticed.

**"I'm sorry," Grover sniffled. "I'm a failure. I'm- I'm the worst satyr in the world."**

"Actually I think you might be the best," Annabeth said, "after everything you've done."

Grover blushed and had no idea what to say to that.

**He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. I mean, the Converse hi-top came off. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.**

**"Oh, Styx!" he mumbled.**

"Styx?" Jason and Piper asked. Then blushed because they said the same thing.

"It's like the demigod word for crap." Annabeth replied.

**Thunder rolled across the clear sky.**

**As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, I thought, Well, that settles it.**

**Grover was a satyr. I was ready to bet that if I shaved his curly brown hair, I'd find tiny horns on his head.**

Grover began frantically touching his head, which made everyone else laugh.

**But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even minotaurs. All that meant was my mom really had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.**

**I was alone. An orphan. I would have to live with ... Smelly Gabe?**

Everyone shuddered at the thought.

**No. That would never happen. I would live on the streets first. I would pretend I was seventeen and join the army. I'd do something.**

"I don't think he could've pulled that off," Annabeth said, with a giggle.

**Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid- poor goat, satyr, whatever- looked as if he expected to be hit.**

**I said, "It wasn't your fault."**

**"Yes, it was. I was supposed to**_**protect**___**you."**

**"Did my mother ask you to protect me?"**

**"No. But that's my job. I'm a keeper. At least... I was."**

**"But why ..." I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.**

**"Don't strain yourself," Grover said. "Here." He helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips.**

**I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn't that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies.**

_Yumm! _Leo thought.

**And not just any cookies- my mom's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn't go away, but I felt as if my mom had just brushed her hand against my cheek, given me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay.**

Everyone smiled sadly.

**Before I knew it, I'd drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I'd just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn't even melted.**

**"Was it good?" Grover asked.**

**I nodded.**

**"What did it taste like?" He sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.**

**"Sorry," I said. "I should've let you taste."**

**His eyes got wide. "No! That's not what I meant. I just... wondered."**

**"Chocolate-chip cookies," I said. "My mom's homemade."**

**He sighed. "And how do you feel?"**

**"Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards."**

"DO IT!" Leo chanted.

**"That's good," he said. "That's good. I don't think you could risk drinking any more of that stuff"**

**"What do you mean?"**

**He took the empty glass from me gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set it back on the table. "Come on. Chiron and Mr. D are waiting."**

**The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse.**

**My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. Grover offered to carry the Minotaur horn, but I held on to it. I'd paid for that souvenir the hard way. I wasn't going to let it go.**

**As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath.**

**We must've been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn't process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.**

"It really is beautiful," Piper added, and everyone nodded in agreement.

**Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond-haired girl who'd spoon-fed me popcorn-flavored pudding was leaning on the porch rail next to them.**

**The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels- what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs. That's it. He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park.**

"He better hope Mr. D doesn't read these," Annabeth said.

**He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in at one of Gabe's poker parties, except I got the feeling this guy could've out-gambled even my step father.**

**"That's Mr. D," Grover murmured to me. "He's the camp director. Be polite. The girl, that's Annabeth Chase. She's just a camper, but she's been here longer than just about anybody. And you already know Chiron..."**

**He pointed at the guy whose back was to me.**

**First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.**

**"Mr. Brunner!" I cried.**

"I bet that was a real shocker," Leo said.

**The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers**_**B**_**.**

"I want a teacher like that," Piper said, with a mischievous glint in her eye. She was thinking of all the things she could charmspeak the teacher into doing,

**"Ah, good, Percy," he said. "Now we have four for pinochle."**

**He offered me a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you."**

"He sounds pleasant," Jason said, sarcastically.

**"Uh, thanks." I scooted a little farther away from him because,**_**if**___**there was one thing I had learned from living with Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult has been hitting the happy juice. If Mr. D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr.**

Everyone laughed.

"He wishes he were as awesome as me," Grover said, proudly.

"Sure, he does goat boy," Thalia said, biting back laughter, "Sure he does.

Grover huffed.

**"Annabeth?" Mr. Brunner called to the blond girl.**

"Am I forever going to be known as the blond girl?" Annabeth demanded

**She came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced us. "This young lady nursed you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don't you go check on Percy's bunk? We'll be putting him in cabin eleven for now."**

"Why Cabin eleven? I thought you had to be claimed before you got a cabin," Jason said, perplexed.

"Before you're claimed you get put in the Cabin Eleven, the Hermes, Cabin because he is the god of travelers so he doesn't really mind extending his hospitality," Annabeth said, while Jason, Piper, and Leo had a look of realization on their face.

**Annabeth said, "Sure, Chiron."**

**She was probably my age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic looking. With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, except her eyes ruined the image. They were startling gray, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight.**

"I didn't realize he notices so much," Annabeth said.

**She glanced at the minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined she was going to say,**_**You killed a minotaur!**___**or**_**Wow, you're so awesome!**___**or something like that.**

"In his dreams," Thalia chuckled.

**Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep."**

"Nice one Annabeth," Thalia said, and everyone laughed.

**Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.**

**"So," I said, anxious to change the subject. "You, uh, work here, Mr. Brunner?"**

**"Not Mr. Brunner," the ex-Mr. Brunner said. "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron."**

**"Okay." Totally confused, I looked at the director. "And Mr. D ... does that stand for something?"**

**Mr. D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I'd just belched loudly. "Young man, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason."**

"I still don't understand that," Leo said, while everyone face palmed.

**"Oh. Right. Sorry."**

**"I must say, Percy," Chiron-Brunner broke in, "I'm glad to see you alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time."**

**"House call?"**

**"My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to ... ah, take a leave of absence."**

**I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr. Brunner had taken the class.**

"I wonder what he did to the old teacher..." Jason said.

"He probably manipulated the mist," Thalia shrugged indifferently.

**"You came to Yancy just to teach me?" I asked.**

"That's what gave him his big ego," Thalia said, snickering.

"We both know he doesn't have a big ego," Annabeth said, bighting back laughter.

"Yeah," Thalia said with a smile.

**Chiron nodded. "Honestly, I wasn't sure about you at first.**

**We contacted your mother, let her know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it here alive, and that's always the first test."**

**"Grover," Mr. D said impatiently, "are you playing or not?"**

**"Yes, sir!" Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair, though I didn't know why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.**

"You should be very afraid," Rachel and Grover said.

**"You**_**do**___**know how to play pinochle?" Mr. D eyed me suspiciously.**

**"I'm afraid not," I said.**

**"I'm afraid not,**_**sir**_**," he said.**

**"Sir," I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less.**

**"Well," he told me, "it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all **_**civilized**___**young men to know the rules."**

**"I'm sure the boy can learn," Chiron said.**

**"Please," I said, "what is this place? What am I doing here? Mr. Brun-"Chiron" why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach me?"**

**Mr. D snorted. "I asked the same question."**

"He's really mean," Piper said, with a frown.

**The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in his pile.**

**Chiron smiled at me sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let me know that no matter what my average was,**_**I**___**was his star student. He expected**_**me**___**to have the right answer.**

"I like that smile," Annabeth said.

**"Percy," he said. "Did your mother tell you nothing?'**

**"She said ..." I remembered her sad eyes, looking out over the sea. "She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn't leave. She wanted to keep me close to her."**

**"Typical," Mr. D said. "That's how they usually get killed. Young man, are you bidding or not?"**

"He won't know what's going on," Rachel said, with sympathy.

**"What?" I asked.**

**He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did.**

**"I'm afraid there's too much to tell," Chiron said. "I'm afraid our usual orientation film won't be sufficient."**

"He didn't see the orientation film?" Annabeth said, she had to sit through after everything she'd been through with Thalia and Luke.

"I guess not," Thalia said, smugly. She knew Annabeth had to watch that film and that she didn't like it. Thalia didn't have to see the film either.

**"Orientation film?" I asked.**

**"No," Chiron decided. "Well, Percy. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know-" he pointed to the horn in the shoe box- "that you have killed the Minotaur. No small feat, either, lad. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods- the forces you call the Greek gods- are very much alive."**

**I stared at the others around the table.**

**I waited for somebody to yell,**_**Not!**___**But all I got was Mr. D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points.**

"He's _so_ going to lose," Rachel predicted. She knew Chiron almost always won.

**"Mr. D," Grover asked timidly, "if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"**

**"Eh? Oh, all right."**

**Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully.**

**"Wait," I told Chiron. "You're telling me there's such a thing as god."**

"Weren't you listening... it was gods... not God," Annabeth said.

**"Well, now," Chiron said. "God- capital**_**G**_**, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."**

**"Metaphysical? But you were just talking about-"**

**"Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter."**

"I don't know if the gods will like you calling them small," Jason warned.

**"Smaller?"**

**"Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class."**

**"Zeus," I said. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them."**

**And there it was again the distant thunder on a cloud less day.**

**"Young man," said Mr. D, "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you."**

**"But they're stories," I said. "They're- myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science."**

**"Science!" Mr. D scoffed. "And tell me, Perseus Jackson"-I flinched when he said my real name, which I never told anybody- "what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" Mr. D continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals- they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come**_**so-o-o**___**far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me."**

**I wasn't liking Mr. D much, but there was something about the way he called me mortal, as if... he wasn't. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his soda can, and keeping his mouth shut.**

**"Percy," Chiron said, "you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that**_**immortal**___**means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?"**

"That's deep, man," Leo said, while everyone stared at him in awe at that the fact that he said something that wasn't a joke or a question.

**I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, but the tone of Chiron's voice made me hesitate.**

"Obviously he changed his mind about that," Rachel said.

**"You mean, whether people believed in you or not," I said.**

**"Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call**_**you**___**a myth, just created to explain how little boys can get over losing their mothers?"**

"That was a low blow," Jason said. While the others nodded in agreement.

**My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I wasn't going to let him. I said, "I wouldn't like it. But I don't believe in gods."**

**"Oh, you'd better," Mr. D murmured. "Before one of them incinerates you."**

**Grover said, "P-please, sir. He's just lost his mother. He's in shock."**

**"A lucky thing, too," Mr. D grumbled, playing a card. "Bad enough I'm confined to this miserable job, working with boys who don't even believe.'"**

**He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.**

"He does that all the time..." Annabeth mumbled.

**My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up.**

**"Mr. D," he warned, "your restrictions."**

**Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.**

**"Dear me." He looked at the sky and yelled, "Old habits! Sorry!"**

**More thunder.**

**Mr. D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game.**

**Chiron winked at me. "Mr. D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits."**

"I wished the gods had more control over what they do," Annabeth said with a sigh, while Thalia nodded in agreement.

**"A wood nymph," I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.**

**"Yes," Mr. D confessed. "Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time- well, she really was pretty, and I couldn't stay away- the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. 'Be a better influence,' he told me. 'Work with youths rather than tearing them down.' Ha.' Absolutely unfair."**

**Mr. D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.**

**"And ..." I stammered, "your father is ..."**

_**"Di immortales,**___**Chiron," Mr. D said. "I thought you taught this boy the basics. My father is Zeus, of course."**

"He's my half brother," Jason said, incredulously.

**I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr. D were his master.**

**"You're Dionysus," I said. "The god of wine."**

"Nico prefers Wine Dude," Grover said, with a chuckle.

**Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, 'Well, duh!'?"**

**"Y-yes, Mr. D."**

"What happens if you disagree with him?" Rachel asked.

"I don't want to know," Grover shivered.

**"Then, well, duh! Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?"**

Piper pretended to faint, which made everyone laugh.

"If he's Aphrodite than I'm Ares!" Piper said.

**"You're a god."**

**"Yes, child."**

**"A god. You."**

Everyone snickered at that.

**He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr. D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a strait-jacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.**

**"Would you like to test me, child?" he said quietly.**

**"No. No, sir."**

**The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. "I believe I win."**

**"Not quite, Mr. D," Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, "The game goes to me."**

**I thought Mr. D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.**

**"I'm tired," Mr. D said. "I believe I'll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk,**_**again,**___**about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment."**

Grover shuddered there, he really didn't like that talk…At all!

**Grover's face beaded with sweat. "Y-yes, sir."**

**Mr. D turned to me. "Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson. And mind your manners."**

**He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.**

**"Will Grover be okay?" I asked Chiron.**

**Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. "Old Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been ... ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."**

**"Mount Olympus," I said. "You're telling me there really is a palace there?"**

"Yes, and it's really a beautiful place," Rachel said, "Especially now."

Annabeth blushed.

**"Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do."**

**"You mean the Greek gods are here? Like ... in**_**America**_**?"**

**"Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West."**

**"The what?"**

**"Come now, Percy. What you call 'Western civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know- or as I hope you know, since you passed my course- the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps- Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on- but the same forces, the same gods."**

**"And then they died."**

Everyone face palmed.

"You just met one Seaweed Brain! Of course they didn't die!" Annabeth said in exasperation.

**"Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture.**

At this, Annabeth smiled, causing Thalia to roll her eyes.

**People do not forget the gods. Every place they've ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not- and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either- America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here."**

**It was all too much, especially the fact that**_**I**___**seemed to be included in Chiron's**_**we,**___**as if I were part of some club.**

Everyone chuckled at that.

**"Who are you, Chiron? Who ... who am I?"**

**Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralyzed from the waist down.**

"Not quite," Annabeth said.

**"Who are you?" he mused. "Well, that's the question we all want answered, isn't it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to 'meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be smores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate."**

**And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.**

**I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse's trunk.**

**"What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson. Let's meet the other campers."**

Rachel closed the book, "That's the end of the chapter. Who would like to read next?"

"I will," Thalia said, opening the book, "**I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom."**


	8. I become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom

"**I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom," **Thalia read, raising an eyebrow.

Annabeth just laughed.

"He becomes a god already?" Leo asked in amazement.

"No," Thalia said, "but if he was offered, we know he'd turn it down."

"Idiot," Jason muttered. "Who would turn down immortality?" He said a bit louder, "You guys always said he was stupid. I didn't know he was _that _stupid."

Annabeth and Thalia glared at him with contempt. "Jason Grace, he had his reasons. Immortality always comes with a price." Thalia said, holding herself back from connecting her fist with his face.

"But your immortal," Jason retorted.

"Just because I'm immortal doesn't mean it doesn't come with a price," Thalia said, showing a great deal of restraint."

"Whatever," Jason said.

**Once I got over the fact that my Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour, though I was careful not to walk behind him. I'd done pooper-scooper patrol in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade a few times, and, I'm sorry, I did not trust Chiron's back end the way I trusted his front.**

Everyone was laughing at that.

"Chiron's not gonna like that one," Grover said.

**We passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One pointed to the minotaur horn I was carrying. Another said, "That's **_**him**_**."**

**Most of the campers were older than me. Their satyr friends were bigger than Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts, with nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn't normally shy, but the way they stared at me made me uncomfortable. I felt like they were expecting me to do a flip or something.**

**I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I'd realized—four stories tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upscale seaside resort. I was checking out the brass eagle weather vane on top when something caught my eye, a shadow in the uppermost window of the attic gable. Something had moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct impression I was being watched.**

"Do you think that was the Oracle?" Rachel questioned, but received no answer.

**"What's up there?" I asked Chiron.**

**He looked where I was pointing, and his smile faded. "Just the attic."**

**"Somebody lives there?"**

**"No," he said with finality. "Not a single living thing."**

"That's really creepy," Leo said.

**I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had moved that curtain.**

**"Come along, Percy," Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced. "Lots to see."**

**We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.**

**Chiron told me the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants and Mount Olympus. "It pays our expenses," he explained. "And the strawberries take almost no effort."**

**He said Mr. D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy when he was around. It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr. D was restricted from growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.**

**I watched the satyr playing his pipe. His music was causing lines of bugs to leave the strawberry patch in every direction, like refugees fleeing a fire. I wondered if Grover could work that kind of magic with music.**

"Not at that point," Grover sighed.

**I wondered if he was still inside the farmhouse, getting chewed out by Mr. D.**

**"Grover won't get in too much trouble, will he?" I asked Chiron. "I mean ... he was a good protector. Really."**

"Thanks, Percy," Grover sighed.

**Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horses back like a saddle. "Grover has big dreams, Percy. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable.**

Grover frowned at that.

**To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill."**

**"But he did that!"**

**"I might agree with you," Chiron said. "But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I'm afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you in New York. Then there's the unfortunate ... ah ... fate of your mother. And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the property line. The council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover's part."**

"I'm such a terrible satyr," Grover mumbled under his breath.

"No you're not Grover," Thalia said, putting her arm around him, "You're the best in the entire world!"

**I wanted to protest. None of what happened was Grover's fault. I also felt really, really guilty. If I hadn't given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might not have gotten in trouble.**

**"He'll get a second chance, won't he?"**

Grover signed even more miserably than before.

"That's enough, Goat-boy," Thalia rolled her eyes. "Stop letting this all get you down."

**Chiron winced. "I'm afraid that**_**was**___**Grover's second chance, Percy. The council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying again. He's still so small for his age..."**

**"How old is he?"**

**"Oh, twenty-eight."**

"Holy Canoli!" Leo exclaimed, "You're old!"

"I'm thirty-three now," Grover said ignoring Leo's mean comment.

**"What! And he's in sixth grade?"**

**"Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, Percy. Grover has been the equivalent of a middle school student for the past six years."**

"That would really stink," Piper said, with pity while Grover nodded.

**"That's horrible."**

**"Quite," Chiron agreed. "At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was anxious to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career..."**

Grover frowned.

**"That's not fair," I said. "What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?"**

"Yes," Grover answered.

**Chiron looked away quickly. "Let's move along, shall we?"**

"Why didn't he answer?" Leo asked.

"No reason!" Thalia and Grover said quickly.

**But I wasn't quite ready to let the subject drop. Something had occurred to me when Chiron talked about my mother's fate, as if he were intentionally avoiding the word**_**death.**___**The beginnings of an idea—a tiny, hopeful fire—started forming in my mind.**

**"Chiron," I said. "If the gods and Olympus and all that are real ..."**

**"Yes, child?"**

**"Does that mean the Underworld is real, too?"**

Piper gasped understanding what he was getting at.

**Chiron's expression darkened.**

**"Yes, child." He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. "There is a place where spirits go after death. But for now ... until we know more ... I would urge you to put that out of your mind."**

**"What do you mean, 'until we know more'?"**

**"Come, Percy. Let's see the woods."**

"Way to change the subject, Chiron," Rachel said, sarcastically.

**As we got closer, I realized how huge the forest was. It took up at least a quarter of the valley, with trees so tall and thick, you could imagine nobody had been in there since the Native Americans.**

**Chiron said, "The woods are stocked, if you care to try your luck, but go armed."**

**"Stocked with what?" I asked. "Armed with what?"**

**"You'll see. Capture the flag is Friday night. Do you have your own sword and shield?"**

"Does anyone ever come with their own sword and shield?" Jason asked.

"You'd be surprised," Annabeth said, with a grin.

**"My own—?"**

**"No," Chiron said. "I don't suppose you do. I think a size five will do. I'll visit the armory later."**

**I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armory, but there was too much else to think about, so the tour continued. We saw the archery range, the canoeing lake, the stables (which Chiron didn't seem to like very much),**

"I wonder why..." Thalia said, in mock thought. **(Is that a real thing? I think it is….)**

**the javelin range, the sing-along amphitheater, and the arena where Chiron said they held sword and spear fights.**

**"Sword and spear fights?" I asked.**

**"Cabin challenges and all that," he explained. "Not lethal. Usually. Oh, yes, and there's the mess hall."**

"Speaking of it's almost time for lunch," Grover said.

"Good. I'm starving," Rachel and Leo said.

**Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen stone picnic tables. No roof. No walls.**

**"What do you do when it rains?" I asked.**

**Chiron looked at me as if I'd gone a little weird.**

"It doesn't rain here Seaweed Brain," Annabeth said, with a groan. She really wished Percy would be a bit smarter.

"Except for that one time," Grover reminded her.

"What one time?" Piper asked, yet she received no answer.

**"We still have to eat, don't we?" I decided to drop the subject.**

**Finally, he showed me the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a row on either side. And they were without doubt the most bizarre collection of buildings I'd ever seen.**

**Except for the fact that each had a large brass number above the door (odds on the left side, evens on the right), they looked absolutely nothing alike. Number nine had smokestacks, like a tiny factory. Number four had tomato vines on the walls and a roof made out of real grass. Seven seemed to be made of solid gold, which gleamed so much in the sunlight it was almost impossible to look at. They all faced a commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek statues, fountains, flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops (which were more my speed).**

**In the center of the field was a huge stone-lined firepit. Even though it was a warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. A girl about nine years old was tending the flames, poking the coals with a stick.**

"Who's that?" Leo asked.

"Hestia," Rachel said nonchalantly.

"You guys have TWO gods at camp?" Leo asked in astonishment.

"No," Rachel said, "Hestia only comes on occasion.

**The pair of cabins at the head of the field, numbers one and two, looked like his-and-hers mausoleums, big white marble boxes with heavy columns in front. Cabin one was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve. Its polished bronze doors shimmered like a hologram, so that from different angles lightning bolts seemed to streak across them.**

Thalia and Jason shivered. That giant statue of Zeus was really creepy.

**Cabin two was more graceful somehow, with slimmer columns garlanded with pomegranates and flowers. The walls were carved with images of peacocks.**

**"Zeus and Hera?" I guessed.**

**"Correct," Chiron said.**

**"Their cabins look empty."**

**"Several of the cabins are. That's true. No one ever stays in one or two."**

**Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot.**

"They wouldn't like that," Grover said, with a frown.

**Twelve cabins for the twelve Olympians. But why would some be empty?**

**I stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three.**

"Of course he's stop there," Rachel said with a sad smile.

**It wasn't high and mighty like cabin one, but long and low and solid. The outer walls were of rough gray stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral, as if the slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor. I peeked inside the open doorway and Chiron said, "Oh, I wouldn't do that!"**

**Before he could pull me back, I caught the salty scent of the interior, like the wind on the shore at Montauk. The interior walls glowed like abalone. There were six empty bunk beds with silk sheets turned down. But there was no sign anyone had ever slept there. The place felt so sad and lonely, I was glad when Chiron put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Come along, Percy."**

**Most of the other cabins were crowded with campers.**

**Number five was bright red—a real nasty paint job, as if the color had been splashed on with buckets and fists.**

"Yep, that's how they did it," Grover and Annabeth coursed.

**The roof was lined with barbed wire. A stuffed wild boar's head hung over the doorway, and its eyes seemed to follow me. Inside I could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, both girls and boys, arm wrestling and arguing with each other while rock music blared. The loudest was a girl maybe thirteen or fourteen. She wore a size XXXL CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirt under a camouflage jacket. She zeroed in on me and gave me an evil sneer. She reminded me of Nancy Bobofit, though the camper girl was much bigger and tougher looking, and her hair was long and stringy, and brown instead of red.**

"Clarisse," everyone said.

**I kept walking, trying to stay clear of Chiron's hooves. "We haven't seen any other centaurs," I observed.**

**"No," said Chiron sadly. "My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, I'm afraid. You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But you won't see any here."**

Rachel and Thalia laughed. The Party Ponies are quite wild.

**"You said your name was Chiron. Are you really ..."**

**He smiled down at me.**_**"The**___**Chiron from the stories? Trainer of Hercules and all that? Yes, Percy, I am."**

**"But, shouldn't you be dead?"**

"Way to be subtle," Piper said, laughing.

**Chiron paused, as if the question intrigued him. "I honestly don't know about**_**should**___**be. The truth is, I**_**can't**___**be dead. You see, eons ago the gods granted my wish. I could continue the work I loved. I could be a teacher of heroes as long as humanity needed me. I gained much from that wish ... and I gave up much. But I'm still here, so I can only assume I'm still needed."**

**I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It wouldn't have made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list.**

**"Doesn't it ever get boring?"**

**"No, no," he said. "Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring."**

**"Why depressing?"**

**Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again.**

**"Oh, look," he said. "Annabeth is waiting for us."**

"I think someone needs to teach him how to change the subject better," Jason said.

**The blond girl I'd met at the Big House was reading a book in front of the last cabin on the left, number eleven.**

**When we reached her, she looked me over critically, like she was still thinking about how much I drooled.**

"Was not," Annabeth said, sticking her tongue out at the book.

**I tried to see what she was reading, but I couldn't make out the title. I thought my dyslexia was acting up. Then I realized the title wasn't even English. The letters looked Greek to me. I mean, literally Greek.**

**There were pictures of temples and statues and different kinds of columns, like those in an architecture book.**

"That's because it _was_ an architecture book, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth said.

**"Annabeth," Chiron said, "I have masters' archery class at noon. Would you take Percy from here?"**

**"Yes, sir."**

**"Cabin eleven," Chiron told me, gesturing toward the doorway. "Make yourself at home."**

**Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp cabin, with the emphasis on**_**old.**___**The threshold was worn down, the brown paint peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor's symbols, a winged pole with two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it... ?**

"A caduceus," Jason said.

**A caduceus.**

"I'm surprised he knew that." Annabeth said.

**Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center.**

**Chiron didn't go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw him they all stood and bowed respectfully.**

**"Well, then," Chiron said. "Good luck, Percy. I'll see you at dinner."**

**He galloped away toward the archery range.**

**I stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren't bowing anymore. They were staring at me, sizing me up. I knew this routine. I'd gone through it at enough schools.**

**"Well?" Annabeth prompted. "Go on."**

**So naturally I tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of myself.**

"Way to go Percy," Thalia smirked.

**There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything.**

**Annabeth announced, "Percy Jackson, meet cabin eleven."**

**"Regular or undetermined?" somebody asked.**

**I didn't know what to say, but Annabeth said, "Undetermined."**

**Everybody groaned.**

**A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward.**

Annabeth, Thalia, Grover, and Rachel frowned.

**"Now, now, campers. That's what we're here for. Welcome, Percy. You can have that spot on the floor, right over there."**

**The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.**

**"This is Luke," Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I glanced over and could've sworn she was blushing.**

"I was _not_ blushing," Annabeth protested.

"You probably were," Thalia said.

"Oh, shut up!"

**She saw me looking, and her expression hardened again. "He's your counselor for now."**

**"For now?" I asked.**

**"You're undetermined," Luke explained patiently. "They don't know what cabin to put you in, so you're here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers."**

**I looked at the tiny section of floor they'd given me. I had nothing to put there to mark it as my own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur's horn. I thought about setting that down, but then I remembered that Hermes was also the god of thieves.**

**I looked around at the campers' faces, some sullen and suspicious, some grinning stupidly, some eyeing me as if they were waiting for a chance to pick my pockets.**

Everyone laughed at that.

**"How long will I be here?" I asked.**

**"Good question," Luke said. "Until you're determined."**

**"How long will that take?"**

**The campers all laughed.**

Everyone frowned except for Jason, Piper, and Leo: who just looked confused.

**"Come on," Annabeth told me. "I'll show you the volleyball court."**

**"I've already seen it."**

**"Come on." She grabbed my wrist and dragged me outside. I could hear the kids of cabin eleven laughing behind me.**

**When we were a few feet away, Annabeth said, "Jackson, you have to do better than that."**

**"What?"**

**She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, "I can't believe I thought you were the one."**

"Oh, but he is," Thalia said, waggling her eyebrows.

"That's not what I meant!" Annabeth exclaimed, exasperated.

"Suuuuure," Everyone else chorused.

**"What's your problem?" I was getting angry now. "All I know is, I kill some bull guy—"**

**"Don't talk like that!" Annabeth told me. "You know how many kids at this camp wish they'd had your chance?"**

**"To get killed?"**

**"To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?"**

"Riding ponies and making rainbows," Leo said, with a grin.

**I shook my head. "Look, if the thing I fought really was**_**the**___**Minotaur, the same one in the stories ..."**

**"Yes."**

**"Then there's only one."**

**"Yes."**

**"And he died, like, a gajillion years ago, right? Theseus killed him in the labyrinth. So ..."**

**"Monsters don't die, Percy. They can be killed. But they don't die."**

**"Oh, thanks. That clears it up."**

**"They don't have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you're lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them arche types. Eventually, they re-form."**

**I thought about Mrs. Dodds. "You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a sword—"**

**"The Fur ... I mean, your math teacher. That's right. She's still out there. You just made her very, very mad."**

"She really doesn't like you," Nico said.

"Whatever," Percy shrugged.

**"How did you know about Mrs. Dodds?"**

**"You talk in your sleep."**

**"You almost called her something. A Fury? They're Hades' torturers, right?"**

**Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up and swallow her.**

**"You shouldn't call them by name, even here. We call them the Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all."**

**"Look, is there anything we**_**can**___**say without it thundering?" I sounded whiny, even to myself, but right then I didn't care. "Why do I have to stay in cabin eleven, anyway? Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of empty bunks right over there."**

**I pointed to the first few cabins, and Annabeth turned pale. "You don't just choose a cabin, Percy. It depends on who your parents are. Or ... your parent."**

**She stared at me, waiting for me to get it.**

**"My mom is Sally Jackson," I said.**

**"She works at the candy store in Grand Central Station. At least, she used to."**

**"I'm sorry about your mom, Percy. But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about your other parent. Your dad."**

**"He's dead. I never knew him."**

**Annabeth sighed. Clearly, she'd had this conversation before with other kids.**

"Yeah, too many times to count," Annabeth said.

**"Your father's not dead, Percy."**

**"How can you say that? You know him?"**

**"No, of course not."**

**"Then how can you say—"**

**"Because I know**_**you.**_ **You wouldn't be here if you weren't one of us."**

**"You don't know anything about me."**

**"No?" She raised an eyebrow. "I bet you moved around from school to school. I bet you were kicked out of a lot of them."**

**"How—"**

**"Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too."**

"So most half-bloods are like that," Jason said , because this was news to him.

**I tried to swallow my embarrassment. "What does that have to do with anything?"**

**"Taken together, it's almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That's because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek.**

**And the ADHD—you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battle field reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don't want you seeing them for what they are."**

**"You sound like ... you went through the same thing?"**

**"Most of the kids here did. If you weren't like us, you couldn't have survived the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar."**

**"Ambrosia and nectar."**

**"The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff would've killed a normal kid. It would've turned your blood to fire and your bones to sand and you'd be dead. Face it. You're a half-blood."**

**A half-blood.**

**I was reeling with so many questions I didn't know where to start.**

**Then a husky voice yelled, "Well! A newbie!"**

"Ah, this should be interesting," Jason said.

**I looked over. The big girl from the ugly red cabin was sauntering toward us. She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean looking like her, all wearing camo jackets.**

**"Clarisse," Annabeth sighed. "Why don't you go polish your spear or something?"**

**"Sure, Miss Princess," the big girl said. "So I can run you through with it Friday night."**

"To bad I wasn't the bait," Annabeth said, smugly.

"Who was?" Piper asked.

Annabeth gave no reply.

_**''Erre es korakas!"**_ **Annabeth said, which I somehow under stood was Greek for 'Go to the crows!' though I had a feeling it was a worse curse than it sounded. "You don't stand a chance."**

**"We'll pulverize you," Clarisse said, but her eye twitched. Perhaps she wasn't sure she could follow through on the threat. She turned toward me. "Who's this little runt?"**

**"Percy Jackson," Annabeth said, "meet Clarisse, Daughter of Ares."**

**I blinked. "Like ... the war god?"**

"You're always so quick on the uptake," Annabeth shook her head.

**Clarisse sneered. "You got a problem with that?"**

**"No," I said, recovering my wits. "It explains the bad smell."**

Everyone chuckled at that.

**Clarisse growled. "We got an initiation ceremony for newbies, Prissy."**

**"Percy."**

**"Whatever. Come on, I'll show you."**

**"Clarisse—" Annabeth tried to say.**

**"Stay out of it, wise girl."**

**Annabeth looked pained, but she did stay out of it,**

"You just let them pick on him," Rachel said.

"Better him than me," Annabeth said with a devilish grin.

**and I didn't really want her help. I was the new kid. I had to earn my own rep.**

**I handed Annabeth my minotaur horn and got ready to fight, but before I knew it, Clarisse had me by the neck and was dragging me toward a cinder-block building that I knew immediately was the bathroom.**

**I was kicking and punching. I'd been in plenty of fights before, but this big girl Clarisse had hands like iron. She dragged me into the girls' bathroom. There was a line of toilets on one side and a line of shower stalls down the other. It smelled just like any public bathroom, and I was thinking—as much as I**_**could**___**think with Clarisse ripping my hair out—that if this place belonged to the gods, they should've been able to afford classier johns.**

**Clarisse's friends were all laughing, and I was trying to find the strength I'd used to fight the Minotaur, but it just wasn't there.**

**"Like he's 'Big Three' material," Clarisse said as she pushed me toward one of the toilets. "Yeah, right. Minotaur probably fell over laughing, he was so stupid looking."**

**Her friends snickered.**

**Annabeth stood in the corner, watching through her fingers.**

"Was not!"

**Clarisse bent me over on my knees and started pushing my head toward the toilet bowl. It reeked like rusted pipes and, well, like what goes into toilets. I strained to keep my head up. I was looking at the scummy water, thinking, I will not go into that. I won't.**

**Then something happened. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. I heard the plumbing rumble, the pipes shudder. Clarisse's grip on my hair loosened. Water shot out of the toilet, making an arc straight over my head, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Clarisse screaming behind me.**

Everyone laughed.

**I turned just as water blasted out of the toilet again, hitting Clarisse straight in the face so hard it pushed her down onto her butt.**

"Nice!" Thalia laughed.

"Disgusting!" Rachel groaned.

**The water stayed on her like the spray from a fire hose, pushing her backward into a shower stall.**

**She struggled, gasping, and her friends started coming toward her.**

"Idiots," Thalia said, "Didn't they realize that was just going to make them get hit too?"

**But then the other toilets exploded, too, and six more streams of toilet water blasted them back. The showers acted up, too, and together all the fixtures sprayed the camouflage girls right out of the bathroom, spinning them around like pieces of garbage being washed away.**

**As soon as they were out the door, I felt the tug in my gut lessen, and the water shut off as quickly as it had started.**

**The entire bathroom was flooded. Annabeth hadn't been spared.**

"I didn't really appreciate that," Annabeth said.

**She was dripping wet, but she hadn't been pushed out the door. She was standing in exactly the same place, staring at me in shock.**

**I looked down and realized I was sitting in the only dry spot in the whole room. There was a circle of dry floor around me. I didn't have one drop of water on my clothes. Nothing.**

**I stood up, my legs shaky.**

**Annabeth said, "How did you ..."**

**"I don't know."**

**We walked to the door. Outside, Clarisse and her friends were sprawled in the mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk. Clarisse's hair was flattened across her face. Her camouflage jacket was sopping and she smelled like sewage. She gave me a look of absolute hatred. "You are dead, new boy. You are totally dead."**

"Wow, that's so scary," Thalia chuckled.

**I probably should have let it go, but I said, "You want to gargle with toilet water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth."**

Everyone chuckled.

**Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her toward cabin five, while the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.**

**Annabeth stared at me. I couldn't tell whether she was just grossed out or angry at me for dousing her.**

**"What?" I demanded. "What are you thinking?"**

**"I'm thinking," she said, "that I want you on my team for capture the flag."**

Thalia waggled her eyebrows again. She passed the book to Annabeth.

"My dinner goes up in smoke." Thalia said after passing the book.

"It's lunch time," Annabeth said, while Leo raced out the door.


	9. Chapter 10

**SUPER IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Ok, so I forgot this in the last chapter. So hey what's shakin? Anyway, California was fun and I have very, very bad news. **

**So the story that I was using to get the actual Lighting Thief story from, has been taken off of FanFiction for various reasons. That means no more chapters until I find another story to use (I lost my copy of the lightning thief)**

**Sorry guys. PM me or review if you have any ideas.**

**P.S. I know last chapter it said "Percy said" that was a typo. It was from the story I was using.**


	10. My dinner goes up in smoke

**Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or HoO.**

MY DINNER GOES UP IN SMOKE

"**My Dinner Goes up in Smoke,"** Annabeth read.

**Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.**

Leo snickered, but soon stopped when Annabeth glared at him.

**She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man),**

"GOAT-MAN!" Grover yelled. "IT WAS PAN!"

"The cooking spray?" Leo asked.

Everyone face palmed.

**and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.**

"It so much fun," Leo said happily.

"Only cause your immune to fire," Jason said.

**Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.**

**"I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."**

**"Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets."**

**"Whatever."**

**"It wasn't my fault."**

"Yes it was," Everyone said.

**She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it**_**was**___**my fault. I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.**

"I wish I could become one with plumbing." Leo said, seriously.

Earning him odd looks from the others.

**"You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth said.**

**"Who?"**

**"Not who. What.**

"Rachel's not a thing," Jason said, looking from Annabeth to Rachel and back again.

"This was before Rachel," Annabeth said, with a shudder.

**The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."**

**I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.**

"No one's going to give them to you," Thalia said with a snort.

**I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below.**

"Naiads," Annabeth growled, "They are terrible flirts."

**They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.**

**I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.**

**"Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."**

"Don't go repeating yourself Annie," Thalia said, looking smug.

Annabeth punched her, "Don't. Call. Me. Annie!"

**"Naiads," I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I want to go home now."**

**Annabeth frowned. "Don't you get it, Percy? You**_**are**___**home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."**

**"You mean, mentally disturbed kids?"**

"We aren't all that way!" Everyone protested.

**"I mean**_**not human.**___**Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."**

**"Half-human and half-what?"**

"Oh, yippie skippy. Isn't he bright?" Thalia said sarcastically.

**"I think you know."**

**I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.**

**"God," I said. "Half-god."**

**Annabeth nodded. "Your father isn't dead, Percy. He's one of the Olympians."**

**"That's ... crazy."**

**"Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?"**

**"But those are just—" I almost said**_**myths**___**again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years,**_**I**___**might be considered a myth.**

**"But if all the kids here are half-gods—"**

**"Demigods," Annabeth said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods."**

**"Then who's your dad?"**

**Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject.**

"Oh, did he ever," Annabeth said.

**"My dad is a professor at West Point," she said. "I haven't seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history."**

**"He's human."**

**"What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?"**

"Very," All the girls said.

**"Who's your mom, then?"**

**"Cabin six."**

"You really thought he'd know what that meant?" Rachel asked.

"No," Annabeth said, quietly, "Not really."

**"Meaning?"**

**Annabeth straightened. "Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle."**

**Okay, I thought. Why not?**

**"And my dad?"**

**"Undetermined," Annabeth said, "like I told you before. Nobody knows."**

**"Except my mother. She knew."**

**"Maybe not, Percy. Gods don't always reveal their identities."**

**"My dad would have. He loved her."**

**Annabeth gave me a cautious look. She didn't want to burst my bubble.**

"She did know," Annabeth said quietly.

"She did?" Piper asked.

Annabeth nodded, "She was clear-sighted, Like Rachel."

**"Maybe you're right. Maybe he'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens."**

**"You mean sometimes it doesn't?"**

"That's not supposed to be the issue now," Thalia said.

"What do you mean?" Jason asked.

"I'm sure you'll find out later," Annabeth said, with pain and remembrance. **(A/N: was that the right word?)**

**Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always ... Well, sometimes they don't care about us, Percy. They ignore us."**

**I thought about some of the kids I'd seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. I'd known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn't have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave better.**

**"So I'm stuck here," I said. "That's it? For the rest of my life?"**

**"It depends," Annabeth said. "Some campers only stay the summer. If you're a child of Aphrodite or Demeter,**

"Which he is definitely not," Thalia said with a snort.

"Well, there was this one time…." Said a voice.

Everyone turned to see Nico standing in the door way.

"Hey Death Breath," Thalia said.

"So you guys are reading books about Percy," Nico said, not really intending it to be a question.

Annabeth nodded and he sat down by Leo.

To say Nico was nervous was an understatement. None of them knew that he had been to the Roman camp let alone seen Percy there. Annabeth and Thalia would murder him. He had a feeling his sister's death would be in here. He didn't know what to do. So he sat down and shut up.

**you're probably not a real powerful force. The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it's too dangerous to leave. We're year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they'll ignore us until we're old enough to cause trouble—about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you'd know them. Some don't even realize they're demigods. But very, very few are like that."**

**"So monsters can't get in here?"**

**Annabeth shook her head. "Not unless they're intentionally stocked in the woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside."**

**"Why would anybody want to summon a monster?"**

**"Practice fights. Practical jokes."**

**"Practical jokes?"**

**"The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry farm."**

"Well I didn't see a strawberry farm." Rachel said.

"You're clear-sighted though," Annabeth said, "So you would see the camp for what it really was."

**"So ... you're a year-rounder?"**

**Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke's, except Annabeth's also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.**

**"I've been here since I was seven," she said. "Every August, on the last day of summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I've been here longer than most of the counselors, and they're all in college."**

**"Why did you come so young?"**

"Wow Perce," Thalia said, "way to hit the hard to talk about topic."

**She twisted the ring on her necklace. "None of your business."**

**"Oh." I stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. "So ... I could just walk out of here right now if I wanted to?"**

**"It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr. D's or Chiron's permission. But they wouldn't give permission until the end of the summer session unless ..."**

**"Unless?"**

**"You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time …**

"It must've been really annoying when no one would tell him what was happening and they would never finish their sentences," Piper said.

**Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn't gone well.**

**"Back in the sick room," I said, "when you were feeding me that stuff—"**

**"Ambrosia."**

**"Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice."**

**Annabeth's shoulders tensed. "So you**_**do**___**know some thing?"**

**"Well... no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn't have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?"**

**She clenched her fists.**

**"I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but they won't tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last time I was there, everything seemed so**_**normal**_**."**

**"You've been to Olympus?"**

**"Some of us year-rounders—Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others—we took a field trip during winter solstice. That's when the gods have their big annual council."**

**"But... how did you get there?"**

**"The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor." She looked at me like she was sure I must know this already.**

"Doesn't everyone know that a whole other city is floating above the Empire State Building?" Thalia said sarcastically.

"There is?" Leo asked, "What is it?"

"Olympus, Leo. Olympus," Annabeth said, shaking her head at his antics.

**"You**_**are**___**a New Yorker, right?"**

**"Oh, sure." As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the Empire State Building, but I decided not to point that out.**

**"Right after we visited," Annabeth continued, "the weather got weird, as if the gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I've overheard satyrs talking. The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn't returned by summer solstice, there's going to be trouble. When you came, I was hoping ... I mean— Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for Ares. And of course she's got the rivalry with Poseidon.**

Everyone chuckled.

**But, I mean, aside from that, I thought we could work together. I thought you might know something."**

**I shook my head. I wished I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tired and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.**

**"I've got to get a quest," Annabeth muttered to her self. "I'm**_**not**___**too young. If they would just tell me the problem …"**

**I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must've heard my stomach growl. She told me to go on, she'd catch me later. I left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan.**

"Because I was." Annabeth said, blushing a little.

**Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers. Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to me as I walked over to my spot on the floor and plopped down with my minotaur horn.**

**The counselor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.**

**"Found you a sleeping bag," he said. "And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store."**

**I couldn't tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.**

"Nope," Thalia said with a frown.

**I said, "Thanks."**

**"No prob." Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. "Tough first day?"**

**"I don't belong here," I said. "I don't even believe in gods."**

**"Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn't get any easier."**

**The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.**

Thalia, Annabeth, and Grover frowned.

**"So your dad is Hermes?" I asked.**

**He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes."**

**"The wing-footed messenger guy."**

**"That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."**

"So how come there wasn't that many kids in the Hermes cabin when we got here?" Piper asked.

"Because most of the gods have been keeping their promise," Annabeth said, with a tear in her eye.

"What promise?" Piper asked. Annabeth began to read instead of answering her question.

**I figured Luke didn't mean to call me a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind.**

**"You ever meet your dad?" I asked.**

**"Once."**

**I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he'd tell me. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had any thing to do with how he got his scar.**

**Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, Percy. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other."**

"That's a bit gross," Piper said.

"You know what's even worse?" Thalia asked, " Leo and Piper are technically step brother and step sister."

"EW!" They said in unison.

**He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because an older guy like him—even if he was a counselor—should've steered clear of an un-cool middle-schooler like me. But Luke had welcomed me into the cabin. He'd even stolen me some toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for me all day.**

**I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon. "Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me being 'Big Three' material. Then Annabeth ... twice, she said I might be 'the one.' She said I should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?"**

**Luke folded his knife. "I hate prophecies."**

"I hate prophecies too." Everyone mumbled.

**"What do you mean?"**

**His face twitched around the scar. "Let's just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests. Annabeth's been dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He'd had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn't tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn't destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until...somebody special came to the camp."**

"Somebody special?" Nico asked who received a glare from Annabeth.

**"Somebody special?"**

**"Don't worry about it, kid," Luke said. "Annabeth wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for. Now, come on, it's dinnertime."**

"Ooh, somebody's jealous." Thalia teased.

"Shut up." Annabeth growled already agitated at what Luke had told Percy.

**The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a conch shell, even though I'd never heard one before.**

**Luke yelled, "Eleven, fall in!"**

**The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. We lined up in order of seniority, so of course I was dead last. Campers came from the other cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.**

"I love that place." Thalia said.

"I wonder what your dad would think to hear you say that?" Nico asked.

"Have you been in there?" Jason asked," It's sooooooo creepy!" Thalia nodded in agreement.

**We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods— and when I say out of the woods, I mean**_**straight**___**out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill.**

**In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads.**

**At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven's was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to the edge of a bench with half my butt hanging off.**

**I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs, and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur.**

**Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey-blond hair.**

"Yet Athena is a brunette," Nico said, waggling his eyebrows.

Annabeth punched him, "She has a thing for blondes!"

**Clarisse sat behind me at Ares's table. She'd apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.**

**Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!"**

**Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!"**

**Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Luke said, "Speak to it. Whatever you want—nonalcoholic, of course."**

**I said, "Cherry Coke."**

**The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.**

**Then I had an idea. "**_**Blue**___**Cherry Coke."**

**The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.**

**I took a cautious sip. Perfect.**

**I drank a toast to my mother.**

**She's not gone, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. She's in the Underworld. And if that's a real place, then someday...**

Nico glared at the ground. Percy could get his mother back from Nico's dad and yet he couldn't.

**"Here you go, Percy," Luke said, handing me a platter of smoked brisket.**

**I loaded my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center of the pavilion.**

"He already has too many gods ticked at him to do that," Thalia said with a smirk.

**I wondered if they were going for dessert or something.**

**"Come on," Luke told me.**

**As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest straw berry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.**

**Luke murmured in my ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell."**

**"You're kidding."**

**His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn't help wondering why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food.**

"It doesn't actually smell like burning food." Thalia rolled her eyes.

**Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes. "Hermes."**

**I was next.**

**I wished I knew what god's name to say.**

**Finally, I made a silent plea.**_**Whoever you are, tell me. Please.**_

**I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames.**

**When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn't gag.**

**It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn't have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke.**

**When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.**

**Mr. D got up with a huge sigh. "Yes, I suppose I'd better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels."**

**A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.**

**"Personally," Mr. D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson."**

Everyone laughed at the use of the wrong name since Mr. D did this to all the campers.

**Chiron murmured something.**

**"Er, Percy Jackson," Mr. D corrected. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on."**

**Everybody cheered. We all headed down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo's cabin led a sing-along. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s'mores and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn't feel that anyone was staring at me anymore. I felt that I was home.**

**Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping bag.**

**My fingers curled around the Minotaur's horn. I thought about my mom, but I had good thoughts: her smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was a kid, the way she would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite.**

**When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly.**

**That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood.**

**I wish I'd known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.**

"That's the end of the chapter," Annabeth said shutting the book.

**A/N: New chapter! YAY! Sorry It took so long. Anyway, I'm gonna start leaving verses at the bottom.(Got this idea from crazylove27. Check her out, she's awesome.) Oh yeah, new pen name! Ummm… **

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**John 3:30 (NIV): "He must become greater; I must become less."**

**HEI**


	11. WE CAPTURE A FLAG

_**WE CAPTURE A FLAG**_

We Capture a Flag," Piper read.  
><strong>The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.<strong>  
>"That sounds normal to me," Grover said, nonchalantly.<br>**Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn't that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than English.**  
>"Preach it,"Leo said, arm outstretched.<br>**After a couple of mornings, I could stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache.**  
><strong>The rest of the day, I'd rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something I was good at. Chiron tried to teach me archery,<strong>  
>"I have never seen Percy use a bow," Thalia commented.<br>Grover and Annabeth snorted, "There is a reason," Annabeth said, cackling. **(AN: hehhe evil annabeth)**  
><strong>but we found out pretty quick I wasn't any good with a bow and arrow. He didn't complain, even when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail.<strong>  
>"I understand now," Thalia said, eyes wide.<br>**Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.**  
>"Hardly anyone outruns them," Annabeth said while Leo said "Yes it really is humiliating."<br>**And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverize me.**  
><strong>"There's more where that came from, punk," she'd mumble in my ear.<strong>  
><strong>The only thing I really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn't the kind of heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur.<strong>  
><strong>I knew the senior campers and counselors were watching me, trying to decide who my dad was, but they weren't having an easy time of it. I wasn't as strong as the Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids.<strong>  
>"The hunters are twenty times better!" Thalia scoffed.<br>**I didn't have Hephaestus's skill with metalwork or—gods forbid— Dionysus's way with vine plants. Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But I got the feeling he was just trying to make me feel better. He really didn't know what to make of me either.**  
><strong>Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad. Nothing came. Just that warm feeling I'd always had, like the memory of his smile. I tried not to think too much about my mom, but I kept wondering: if gods and monsters were real, if all this magical stuff was possible, surely there was some way to save her, to bring her back...<strong>  
><strong>I started to understand Luke's bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn't they call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn't my dad, whoever he was, make a phone appear?<strong>  
>"they aren't supposed to get involved," Thalia said resentfully.<br>**Thursday afternoon, three days after I'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood, I had my first sword-fighting lesson. Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular arena, where Luke would be our instructor.**  
><strong>We started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed dummies in Greek armor. I guess I did okay. At least, I understood what I was supposed to do and my reflexes were good.<strong>  
><strong>The problem was, I couldn't find a blade that felt right in my hands. Either they were too heavy, or too light, or too long.<strong>  
>"You can do it!" Leo said, shaking his fist while he continued to chant.<br>**Luke tried his best to fix me up, but he agreed that none of the practice blades seemed to work for me.**  
><strong>We moved on to dueling in pairs. Luke announced he would be my partner, since this was my first time.<strong>  
><strong>"Good luck," one of the campers told me. "Luke's the best swordsman in the last three hundred years."<strong>  
><strong>"Maybe he'll go easy on me," I said.<strong>  
>Everyone who had fought with Luke snorted<br>"Keep believing that Seaweed Brain," Annabeth said frowning.  
><strong>The camper snorted.<strong>  
><strong>Luke showed me thrusts and parries and shield blocks the hard way. With every swipe, I got a little more battered and bruised. "Keep your guard up, Percy," he'd say, then whap me in the ribs with the flat of his blade. "No, not that far up!" Whap! "Lunge!" Whap! "Now, back!" Whap!<strong>  
>"He's doing great," Jason said sarcastically.<br>**By the time he called a break, I was soaked in sweat. Everybody swarmed the drinks cooler. Luke poured ice water on his head, which looked like such a good idea, I did the same.**  
>"Now we see butt-kicking Percy," Nico said, with a grin.<br>**Instantly, I felt better. Strength surged back into my arms. The sword didn't feel so awkward.**  
><strong>"Okay, everybody circle up!" Luke ordered. "If Percy doesn't mind, I want to give you a little demo."<strong>  
><strong>Great, I thought. Let's all watch Percy get pounded.<strong>  
>"Yes! I love to watch stuff like this!" Cried Thalia!<br>**The Hermes guys gathered around. They were suppressing smiles. I figured they'd been in my shoes before and couldn't wait to see how Luke used me for a punching bag. He told everybody he was going to demonstrate a disarming technique: how to twist the enemy's blade with the flat of your own sword so that he had no choice but to drop his weapon.**  
><strong>"This is difficult," he stressed. "I've had it used against me. No laughing at Percy, now. Most swordsmen have to work years to master this technique."<strong>  
>"Percy did it first try," Annabeth said, super quietly.<br>"What?" Piper asked.  
>"Nothing," Annabeth said.<br>**He demonstrated the move on me in slow motion. Sure enough, the sword clattered out of my hand.**  
><strong>"Now in real time," he said, after I'd retrieved my weapon. "We keep sparring until one of us pulls it off. Ready, Percy?"<strong>  
><strong>I nodded, and Luke came after me. Somehow, I kept him from getting a shot at the hilt of my sword. My senses opened up. I saw his attacks coming. I countered. I stepped forward and tried a thrust of my own. Luke deflected it easily, but I saw a change in his face. His eyes narrowed, and he started to press me with more force.<strong>  
><strong>The sword grew heavy in my hand. The balance wasn't right.<strong>  
>"He's dead," Nico said, sadly. He really thought Percy could've done better.<br>**I knew it was only a matter of seconds before Luke took me down, so I figured, What the heck?**  
><strong>I tried the disarming maneuver.<strong>  
><strong>My blade hit the base of Luke's and I twisted, putting my whole weight into a downward thrust.<strong>  
><strong>Clang.<strong>  
><strong>Luke's sword rattled against the stones<strong>.  
>Jason, Piper, Leo, Nico, and Rachel's eyes widened.<br>"Way to go Kelp Head," Thalia said, proudly.  
>"How did he do that?"<br>**The tip of my blade was an inch from his undefended chest.**  
><strong>The other campers were silent.<strong>  
><strong>I lowered my sword. "Um, sorry."<strong>  
><strong>Everyone stared strangely at Percy for this.<strong>  
><strong>For a moment, Luke was too stunned to speak.<strong>  
><strong>"Sorry?" His scarred face broke into a grin. "By the gods, Percy, why are you sorry? Show me that again!"<strong>  
><strong>I didn't want to. The short burst of manic energy had completely abandoned me. But Luke insisted.<strong>  
><strong>This time, there was no contest. The moment our swords connected, Luke hit my hilt and sent my weapon skidding across the floor.<strong>  
><strong>After a long pause, somebody in the audience said, "Beginner's luck?"<strong>  
>"Suuuuure," Leo said.<br>**Luke wiped the sweat off his brow. He appraised at me with an entirely new interest. "Maybe," he said. "But I wonder what Percy could do with a balanced sword..."**  
><strong>Friday afternoon, I was sitting with Grover at the lake, resting from a near-death experience on the climbing wall.<strong>  
>"It's not that bad." Grover pointed out.<br>"Your part goat!" Piper said astonished that he thought that way.  
><strong>Grover had scampered to the top like a mountain goat, but the lava had almost gotten me. My shirt had smoking holes in it. The hairs had been singed off my forearms.<strong>  
><strong>We sat on the pier, watching the naiads do underwater basket-weaving, until I got up the nerve to ask Grover how his conversation had gone with Mr. D.<strong>  
><strong>His face turned a sickly shade of yellow.<strong>  
><strong>"Fine," he said. "Just great."<strong>  
><strong>"So your career's still on track?"<strong>  
><strong>He glanced at me nervously. "Chiron t-told you I want a searcher's license?"<strong>  
><strong>"Well... no." I had no idea what a searcher's license was, but it didn't seem like the right time to ask.<strong>  
><strong>"He just said you had big plans, you know ... and that you needed credit for completing a keeper's assignment. So did you get it?"<strong>  
><strong>Grover looked down at the naiads. "Mr. D suspended judgment. He said I hadn't failed or succeeded with you yet, so our fates were still tied together. If you got a quest and I went along to protect you, and we both came back alive, then maybe he'd consider the job complete."<strong>  
>"But he did so good anyway," Piper said, and Rachel, Thalia and Annabeth nodded.<br>**My spirits lifted. "Well, that's not so bad, right?"**  
><strong>"Blaa-ha-ha! He might as well have transferred me to stable-cleaning duty. The chances of you getting a quest... and even if you did, why would you want me along?"<strong>  
>"Of course he'd want you along." Annabeth exclaimed.<br>"Sure whatever" Grover said, glumly.  
><strong>"Of course I'd want you along!"<strong>  
><strong>Grover stared glumly into the water. "Basket-weaving ... Must be nice to have a useful skill."<strong>  
><strong>I tried to reassure him that he had lots of talents, but that just made him look more miserable. We talked about canoeing and swordplay for a while, then debated the pros and cons of the different gods. Finally, I asked him about the four empty cabins.<strong>  
><strong>"Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis," he said. "She vowed to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The cabin is, you know, honorary. If she didn't have one, she'd be mad.<strong>"  
>"That and also the hunters wouldn't have a place to stay at camp." Thalia pointed out.<br>"And that is a wonderful thing, isn't it?" Asked Grover dreamily.  
>Thalia looked disgusted, "Grover," she said, "What part of maiden forever don't you understand?"<br>"Forget it," Piper said, "Leo doesn't understand either,"  
>"Hey!" Leo said offended, "I totally understand that."<br>"Both of you," commanded Piper, "admit the truth about what you think of the hunters."  
>"Artemis is the best goddess in the whole world," Grover said, not holding back.<br>"Thalia's hot," Leo said dreamily.  
>Thalia punched him in the stomach, "Say that in front of Artemis," she muttered just loud enough for him to hear, "the results would be worth while.<br>**"Yeah, okay. But the other three, the ones at the end. Are those the Big Three?"**  
><strong>Grover tensed. We were getting close to a touchy subject. "No. One of them, number two, is Hera's," he said. "That's another honorary thing. She's the goddess of marriage, so of course she wouldn't go around having affairs with mortals.<strong>  
>"I bet she has kids out there and she just doesn't claim them." Annabeth muttered while Thalia nodded in agreement.<br>**That's her husband's job. When we say the Big Three, we mean the three powerful brothers, the sons of Kronos."**  
><strong>"Zeus, Poseidon, Hades."<strong>  
><strong>"Right. You know. After the great battle with the Titans, they took over the world from their dad and drew lots to decide who got what."<strong>  
><strong>"Zeus got the sky," I remembered. "Poseidon the sea, Hades the Underworld."<strong>  
><strong>"Uh-huh."<strong>  
><strong>"But Hades doesn't have a cabin here."<strong>  
><strong>"No. He doesn't have a throne on Olympus, either. He sort of does his own thing down in the Underworld. If he did have a cabin here ..." Grover shuddered. "Well, it wouldn't be pleasant. Let's leave it at that."<strong>  
>"There's nothing wrong with my cabin." Nico pouted.<br>"Sure there's not," Leo said, dragging the world out.  
>"<strong>But Zeus and Poseidon—they both had, like, a bazillion kids in the myths. Why are their cabins empty?"<strong>  
><strong>Grover shifted his hooves uncomfortably<strong>.  
>"Such an awkward question," Grover said, with a shudder.<br>**"About sixty years ago, after World War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn't sire any more heroes.**  
>"It worked out just... peachy," Thalia muttered, just loud enough for Jason and Nico to here. they frowned and nodded.<br>T**heir children were just too powerful. They were affecting the course of human events too much, causing too much carnage. World War II, you know, that was basically a fight between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of Hades on the other. The winning side, Zeus and Poseidon, made Hades swear an oath with them: no more affairs with mortal women. They all swore on the River Styx."**  
>"Who would've known it was Hades to break the oath,"Piper said quietly.<br>Nico was about to protest but decided not to. Piper was nice and he didn't have the heart to talk about his dad now anyway.  
><strong>Thunder boomed.<strong>  
><strong>I said, "That's the most serious oath you can make."<strong>  
><strong>Grover nodded.<strong>  
><strong>"And the brothers kept their word—no kids?"<strong>  
><strong>Grover's face darkened. "Seventeen years ago, Zeus fell off the wagon.<strong>  
>Thalia's face darkened but no one seemed to notice but Annabeth and Grover.<br>**There was this TV starlet with a big fluffy eighties hairdo—he just couldn't help himself. When their child was born, a little girl named Thalia .. . well, the River Styx is serious about promises. Zeus himself got off easy because he's immortal, but he brought a terrible fate on his daughter."**  
><strong>"But that isn't fair.' It wasn't the little girl's fault."<strong>  
>Thalia frowned and muttered, "I am not a little girl."<br>**Grover hesitated. "Percy, children of the Big Three have powers greater than other half-bloods.**  
>"Yep," Jason and Nico said.<br>"Percy is really powerful. Sometimes I wonder how you didn't know his dad was Poseidon before that," said Thalia, her eyes filled with wonder.  
><strong>They have a strong aura, a scent that attracts monsters. When Hades found out about the girl, he wasn't too happy about Zeus breaking his oath. Hades let the worst monsters out of Tartarus to torment Thalia. A satyr was assigned to be her keeper when she was twelve, but there was nothing he could do.<strong>  
>"Why didn't you just tell him that you were assigned to me?" Thalia asked him.<br>"He might've thought of me as a failure," Grover said, staring hard at the ground.  
>"He wouldn't think that. You're Percy's best friend," Thalia said, shaking Grover's shoulders.<br>"True."  
><strong>He tried to escort her here with a couple of other half-bloods she'd befriended. They almost made it. They got all the way to the top of that hill."<strong>  
><strong>He pointed across the valley, to the pine tree where I'd fought the minotaur. "All three Kindly Ones were after them, along with a horde of hellhounds. They were about to be overrun when Thalia told her satyr to take the other two half-bloods to safety while she held off the monsters. She was wounded and tired, and she didn't want to live like a hunted animal. The satyr didn't want to leave her, but he couldn't change her mind, and he had to protect the others. So Thalia made her final stand alone, at the top of that hill. As she died,<strong>  
>Rachel, Piper, Leo and Jason's eyes all widened. "You died?!" Jason managed to sputter out.<br>Thalia stayed silent so Piper continued to read.  
><strong>Zeus took pity on her. He turned her into that pine tree. Her spirit still helps protect the borders of the valley. That's why the hill is called Half-Blood Hill."<strong>  
>"That's why its called Thalia's tree," Piper said quietly.<br>Thalia, Annabeth, and Grover, nodded sadly.  
><strong>I stared at the pine in the distance.<strong>  
><strong>The story made me feel hollow, and guilty too. A girl my age had sacrificed herself to save her friends. She had faced a whole army of monsters. Next to that, my victory over the Minotaur didn't seem like much.<strong>  
>"Always knew he looked up to me." Thalia smirked. Secretly, she was flattered. Percy was so independent and the fact that he looked up to her at one point in his life made her exceptionally happy.<br>**I wondered, if I'd acted differently, could I have saved my mother?**  
><strong>"Grover," I said, "Have heroes really gone on quests to the Underworld?"<strong>  
><strong>"Sometimes," he said. "Orpheus. Hercules. Houdini."<strong>  
>"All those people were half bloods and the world didn't even know," Piper said in amazement.<br>**"And have they ever returned somebody from the dead?"**  
><strong>"No. Never. Orpheus came close... . Percy, you're not seriously thinking—"<strong>  
><strong>"No," I lied.<strong>  
>"Percy lied?" Thalia said sarcastically, "it can't be so!"<br>**"I was just wondering. So ... a satyr is always assigned to guard a demigod?"**  
><strong>Grover studied me warily. I hadn't persuaded him that I'd really dropped the Underworld idea. "Not always. We go undercover to a lot of schools. We try to sniff out the half-bloods who have the makings of great heroes. If we find one with a very strong aura, like a child of the Big Three, we alert Chiron. He tries to keep an eye on them, since they could cause really huge problems."<strong>  
>"Grover you're going to make him think he's special." Annabeth joked, "He already has a big head."<br>**"And you found me. Chiron said you thought I might be something special."**  
><strong>Grover looked as if I'd just led him into a trap. "I didn't... Oh, listen, don't think like that. If you were—you know—you'd never ever be allowed a quest, and I'd never get my license. You're probably a child of Hermes. Or maybe even one of the minor gods, like Nemesis, the god of revenge. Don't worry, okay?"<strong>  
><strong>I got the idea he was reassuring himself more than me.<strong>  
><strong>That night after dinner, there was a lot more excitement than usual.<strong>  
><strong>At last, it was time for capture the flag.<strong>  
><strong>When the plates were cleared away, the conch horn sounded and we all stood at our tables.<strong>  
><strong>Campers yelled and cheered as Annabeth and two of her siblings ran into the pavilion carrying a silk banner. It was about ten feet long, glistening gray, with a painting of a barn owl above an olive tree. From the opposite side of the pavilion, Clarisse and her buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size, but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar's head.<strong>  
><strong>I turned to Luke and yelled over the noise, "Those are the flags?"<strong>  
>"What else would they be?" said Thalia.<br>**"Yeah."**  
><strong>"Ares and Athena always lead the teams?"<strong>  
><strong>"Not always," he said. "But often."<strong>  
>"<strong>So, if another cabin captures one, what do you do— repaint the flag?"<strong>  
><strong>He grinned. "You'll see. First we have to get one."<strong>  
><strong>"Whose side are we on?"<strong>  
><strong>He gave me a sly look, as if he knew something I didn't. The scar on his face made him look almost evil in the torchlight. "We've made a temporary alliance with Athena. Tonight, we get the flag from Ares. And you are going to help."<strong>  
>"Oh goody, Percy is going to mess up," Thalia said, "He messed it up when he was on my team."<br>"I don't remember that," Annabeth said, vexed.  
>"You weren't there, Little Annie-beth," Thalia said, frowning a bit at the memory.<br>**Apparently, privileges had been traded—shower times, chore schedules, the best slots for activities—in order to win support.**  
><strong>Ares had allied themselves with everybody else: Dionysus, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus. From what I'd seen, Dionysus's kids were actually good athletes, but there were only two of them. Demeter's kids had the edge with nature skills and outdoor stuff but they weren't very aggressive. Aphrodite's sons and daughters I wasn't too worried about. They mostly sat out every activity and checked their reflections in the lake and did their hair and gossiped. Hephaestus's kids weren't pretty, and there were only four of them, but they were big and burly from working in the metal shop all day. They might be a problem.<strong>  
>"It's their automatons that you need to worry about." Nico pointed out.<br>**That, of course, left Ares's cabin: a dozen of the biggest, ugliest, meanest kids on Long Island, or anywhere else on the planet.**  
><strong>Chiron hammered his hoof on the marble.<strong>  
><strong>"Heroes!" he announced. "You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!"<strong>  
><strong>He spread his hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, bronze swords, spears, oxhide shields coated in metal.<strong>  
><strong>"Whoa," I said. "We're really supposed to use these?"<strong>  
>"No," Thalia said sarcastically, "They just put them on the tables for no reason."<br>**Luke looked at me as if I were crazy. "Unless you want to get skewered by your friends in cabin five. Here—Chiron thought these would fit. You'll be on border patrol."**  
><strong>My shield was the size of an NBA backboard, with a big caduceus in the middle. It weighed about a million pounds. I could have snowboarded on it fine, but I hoped nobody seriously expected me to run fast. My helmet, like all the helmets on Athena's side, had a blue horsehair plume on top. Ares and their allies had red plumes.<strong>  
><strong>Annabeth yelled, "Blue team, forward!"<strong>  
><strong>We cheered and shook our swords and followed her down the path to the south woods. The red team yelled taunts at us as they headed off toward the north.<strong>  
><strong>I managed to catch up with Annabeth without tripping over my equipment. "Hey."<strong>  
><strong>Annabeth and Percy glared at the group of their friends who where smirking at them chuckling with silent laughter.<strong>  
><strong>She kept marching.<strong>  
><strong>"So what's the plan?" I asked. "Got any magic items you can loan me?"<strong>  
><strong>Her hand drifted toward her pocket, as if she were afraid I'd stolen something.<strong>  
>"Like Percy could steal anything," Thalia snorted.<br>"I didn't know that," protested Annabeth.  
><strong>"Just watch Clarisse's spear," she said. "You don't want that thing touching you. Otherwise, don't worry. We'll take the banner from Ares. Has Luke given you your job?"<strong>  
><strong>"Border patrol, whatever that means."<strong>  
><strong>"It's easy. Stand by the creek, keep the reds away. Leave the rest to me. Athena always has a plan."<strong>  
><em><span><strong>(AN: There may be a missing line here. The story i copied the original story from had the line Bold but I didn't think that it was supposed to be there.)**_  
><strong>She pushed ahead, leaving me in the dust.<strong>  
><strong>"Okay," I mumbled. "Glad you wanted me on your team."<strong>  
><strong>It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in and out of view. Annabeth stationed me next to a little creek that gurgled over some rocks, then she and the rest of the team scattered into the trees.<strong>  
><strong>Standing there alone, with my big blue-feathered helmet and my huge shield, I felt like an idiot. The bronze sword, like all the swords I'd tried so far, seemed balanced wrong. The leather grip pulled on my hand like a bowling ball.<strong>  
><strong>There was no way anybody would actually attack me, would they? I mean, Olympus had to have liability issues, right?<strong>  
>"Well I would think they would," said Leo seriously.<br>Everyone else face palmed.  
><strong>Far away, the conch horn blew. I heard whoops and yells in the woods, the clanking of metal, kids fighting. A blue-plumed ally from Apollo raced past me like a deer, leaped through the creek, and disappeared into enemy territory.<strong>  
><strong>Great, I thought. I'll miss all the fun, as usual.<strong>  
><strong>Then I heard a sound that sent a chill up my spine, a low canine growl, somewhere close by.<strong>  
>Jason and Piper raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.<br>**I raised my shield instinctively; I had the feeling something was stalking me.**  
><strong>Then the growling stopped. I felt the presence retreating.<strong>  
><strong>On the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. Five Ares warriors came yelling and screaming out of the dark.<strong>  
><strong>"Cream the punk!" Clarisse screamed.<strong>  
>"Good luck, Perce," Leo said, "you're going to need it." Piper, Rachel, and Jason nodded in agreement.<br>**Her ugly pig eyes glared through the slits of her helmet. She brandished a five-foot-long spear, its barbed metal tip flickering with red light. Her siblings had only the standard-issue bronze swords—not that that made me feel any better.**  
><strong>They charged across the stream. There was no help in sight. I could run. Or I could defend myself against half the Ares cabin.<strong>  
>"Run."Everyone except Annabeth said in unison.<br>**I managed to sidestep the first kid's swing, but these guys were not as stupid the Minotaur. They surrounded me, and Clarisse thrust at me with her spear. My shield deflected the point, but I felt a painful tingling all over my body. My hair stood on end. My shield arm went numb, and the air burned.**  
><strong>Electricity. Her stupid spear was electric. I fell back.<strong>  
>"That's why he survives every time I shock him," Thalia said, defeated.<br>"How often do you shock him exactly?" Jason asked.  
>"Always," chorused Annabeth, Thalia and Rachel.<br>**Another Ares guy slammed me in the chest with the butt of his sword and I hit the dirt.**  
><strong>They could've kicked me into jelly, but they were too busy laughing.<strong>  
><strong>"Give him a haircut," Clarisse said. "Grab his hair."<strong>  
>"Annabeth would be quite sad if you cut his hair," Rachel laughed.<br>Annabeth turned beat red as everyone else laughed too.  
><strong>I managed to get to my feet. I raised my sword, but Clarisse slammed it aside with her spear as sparks flew. Now both my arms felt numb.<strong>  
><strong>"Oh, wow," Clarisse said. "I'm scared of this guy. Really scared."<strong>  
><strong>"The flag is that way," I told her. I wanted to sound angry, but I was afraid it didn't come out that way.<strong>  
>"That's the smart way to play capture the flag," Leo said, while everyone else laughed.<br>**"Yeah," one of her siblings said. "But see, we don't care about the flag. We care about a guy who made our cabin look stupid."**  
><strong>"You do that without my help," I told them. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to say.<strong>  
>"Probably not but it was funny." Annabeth laughed along with everyone else.<br>"No wonder they try to kill him," Rachel said.  
><strong>Two of them came at me. I backed up toward the creek, tried to raise my shield, but Clarisse was too fast. Her spear stuck me straight in the ribs. If I hadn't been wearing an armored breastplate, I would've been shish-kebabbed. As it was, the electric point just about shocked my teeth out of my mouth. One of her cabinmates slashed his sword across my arm, leaving a good-size cut.<strong>  
><strong>Seeing my own blood made me dizzy—warm and cold at the same time.<strong>  
><strong>"No maiming," I managed to say.<strong>  
>"Whoopsy-daisy," Leo said.<br>**"Oops," the guy said. "Guess I lost my dessert privilege."**  
>"You guys really need worse punishments," Jason said. He didn't know what made him think that but it just came out. Maybe they had harsher punishments.<br>**He pushed me into the creek and I landed with a splash.**  
>"Idiots," Annabeth and Thalia muttered to each other.<br>**They all laughed. I figured as soon as they were through being amused, I would die. But then something happened. The water seemed to wake up my senses, as if I'd just had a bag of my mom's double-espresso jelly beans.**  
><strong>Clarisse and her cabinmates came into the creek to get me, but I stood to meet them. I knew what to do. I swung the flat of my sword against the first guy's head and knocked his helmet clean off. I hit him so hard I could see his eyes vibrating as he crumpled into the water.<strong>  
><strong>Ugly Number Two and Ugly Number Three came at me. I slammed one in the face with my shield and used my sword to shear off the other guy's horsehair plume. Both of them backed up quick. Ugly Number Four didn't look really anxious to attack, but Clarisse kept coming, the point of her spear crackling with energy. As soon as she thrust, I caught the shaft between the edge of my shield and my sword, and I snapped it like a twig.<strong>  
><strong>"Ah!" she screamed. "You idiot! You corpse-breath worm!"<strong>  
>"That's Nico!" Thalia exclaimed with a laugh. She punched Nico in the arm. He had been extremely quiet and she wondered what he was thinking about.<br>**She probably would've said worse, but I smacked her between the eyes with my sword-butt and sent her stumbling backward out of the creek.**  
><strong>Then I heard yelling, elated screams, and I saw Luke racing toward the boundary line with the red team's banner lifted high. He was flanked by a couple of Hermes guys covering his retreat, and a few Apollos behind them, fighting off the Hephaestus kids. The Ares folks got up, and Clarisse muttered a dazed curse.<strong>  
><strong>"A trick!" she shouted. "It was a trick."<strong>  
>"What did she mean?" Nico asked. Annabeth just smiled at him but didn't answer.<br>**They staggered after Luke, but it was too late. Everybody converged on the creek as Luke ran across into friendly territory. Our side exploded into cheers. The red banner shimmered and turned to silver. The boar and spear were replaced with a huge caduceus, the symbol of cabin eleven. Everybody on the blue team picked up Luke and started carrying him around on their shoulders. Chiron cantered out from the woods and blew the conch horn.**  
><strong>The game was over. We'd won.<strong>  
><strong>I was about to join the celebration when Annabeth's voice, right next to me in the creek, said, "Not bad, hero."<strong>  
>"Aw! You called him a hero." Thalia and Piper cooed teasingly. Annabeth glared at her.<br>**I looked, but she wasn't there.**  
><strong>"Where the heck did you learn to fight like that?" she asked. The air shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she'd just taken it off her head.<strong>  
><strong>I felt myself getting angry. I wasn't even fazed by the fact that she'd just been invisible. "You set me up," I said. "You put me here because you knew Clarisse would come after me, while you sent Luke around the flank. You had it all figured out."<strong>  
><strong>Annabeth shrugged. "I told you. Athena always, always has a plan."<strong>  
><strong>"A plan to get me pulverized."<strong>  
><strong>"I came as fast as I could. I was about to jump in, but ..." She shrugged. "You didn't need help."<strong>  
><strong>Then she noticed my wounded arm. "How did you do that?"<strong>  
>"He obviously got cut." Leo said seriously.<br>**"Sword cut," I said. "What do you think?"**  
><strong>"No. It was a sword cut. Look at it."<strong>  
><strong>The blood was gone. Where the huge cut had been, there was a long white scratch, and even that was fading. As I watched, it turned into a small scar, and disappeared.<strong>  
>"That's a pretty awesome trick." Jason admitted.<br>**"I—I don't get it," I said.**  
><strong>Annabeth was thinking hard.<strong>  
>"When is Annabeth not thinking hard?" Thalia asked laughing.<br>**I could almost see the gears turning. She looked down at my feet, then at Clarisse's broken spear, and said, "Step out of the water, Percy."**  
><strong>"What—"<strong>  
><strong>"Just do it."<strong>  
><strong>I came out of the creek and immediately felt bone tired. My arms started to go numb again. My adrenaline rush left me. I almost fell over, but Annabeth steadied me.<strong>  
>"So weak," Thalia muttered, earning a punch from Annabeth.<br>**"Oh, Styx," she cursed. "This is not good. I didn't want ... I assumed it would be Zeus... ."**  
>"Why would you think that?!" Thalia exclaimed.<br>"You guys are like twins!" Annabeth yelled back.  
><strong>Before I could ask what she meant, I heard that canine growl again, but much closer than before. A howl ripped through the forest.<strong>  
><strong>The campers' cheering died instantly. Chiron shouted something in Ancient Greek, which I would realize, only later, I had understood perfectly: "Stand ready! My bow!"<strong>  
><strong>Annabeth drew her sword.<strong>  
><strong>There on the rocks just above us was a black hound the size of a rhino, with lava-red eyes and fangs like daggers.<strong>  
>"Oh crud," Leo said, scared for the campers.<br>**It was looking straight at me.**  
>"Not good." Muttered Rachel, Thalia, Nico, Leo and Piper.<br>**Nobody moved except Annabeth, who yelled, "Percy, run!"**  
><strong>She tried to step in front of me, but the hound was too fast. It leaped over her—an enormous shadow with teeth—and just as it hit me, as I stumbled backward and felt its razor-sharp claws ripping through my armor, there was a cascade of thwacking sounds, like forty pieces of paper being ripped one after the other. From the hounds neck sprouted a cluster of arrows. The monster fell dead at my feet.<strong>  
>"He's acting so casual about this." Rachel noted.<br>**By some miracle, I was still alive. I didn't want to look underneath the ruins of my shredded armor. My chest felt warm and wet, and I knew I was badly cut. Another second, and the monster would've turned me into a hundred pounds of delicatessen meat.**  
><strong>Chiron trotted up next to us, a bow in his hand, his face grim.<strong>  
><strong>"Di immortales!" Annabeth said. "That's a hellhound from the Fields of Punishment. They don't ... they're not supposed to ..."<strong>  
><strong>"Someone summoned it," Chiron said. "Someone inside the camp."<strong>  
><strong>Luke came over, the banner in his hand forgotten, his moment of glory gone.<strong>  
><strong>Clarisse yelled, "It's all Percy's fault! Percy summoned it!"<strong>  
>"Sure he did," Leo said dragging out the word.<br>**"Be quiet, child," Chiron told her.**  
><strong>We watched the body of the hellhound melt into shadow, soaking into the ground until it disappeared.<strong>  
><strong>"You're wounded," Annabeth told me. "Quick, Percy, get in the water."<strong>  
><strong>"I'm okay."<strong>  
><strong>"No, you're not," she said. "Chiron, watch this."<strong>  
><strong>I was too tired to argue. I stepped back into the creek, the whole camp gathering around me.<strong>  
><strong>Instantly, I felt better. I could feel the cuts on my chest closing up. Some of the campers gasped.<strong>  
><strong>"Look, I—I don't know why," I said, trying to apologize. "I'm sorry..."<strong>  
><strong>But they weren't watching my wounds heal. They were staring at something above my head.<strong>  
><strong>"Percy," Annabeth said, pointing. "Um ..."<strong>  
><strong>By the time I looked up, the sign was already fading, but I could still make out the hologram of green light, spinning and gleaming. A three-tipped spear: a trident.<strong>  
><strong>"Your father," Annabeth murmured. "This is really not good."<strong>  
><strong>"It is determined," Chiron announced.<strong>  
><strong>All around me, campers started kneeling, even the Ares cabin, though they didn't look happy about it.<strong>  
><strong>"My father?" I asked, completely bewildered.<strong>  
>"Seriously?" Thalia rolled her eyes.<br>"He was about to die," Piper commented.  
><strong>"Poseidon," said Chiron. "Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God"<strong>  
>"That's the end of the chapter," Piper said, closing the book.<p>

_**A/N: Hey guys! New Chappie!**_  
><em><span><strong>I will be doing a House of Hades Fanfic, Follow me on Fiction Press at supergabbi18. I don't have any stories on there but I will when I start National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo (You can ask me questions about it PM or twitter,)) I will upload that story.<strong>_  
><em><span><strong>I'm Having a contest! Every chapter I'm going to ask a question. You can tweet me the answer or leave a review. I will pick two winners (one on twitter and one from the reviews) and you will receive the chapter early via DocX OR for the next 2-3 chapters only: A Character (Minor) in my fictionpress story (that is not up yet.), Blank. You will also get one chapter early to be my first followers on Instagram and twitter. <strong>_  
><em><span><strong>And that's pretty much it except for follow me on instagram at: supergabbi18 and on twitter abbyherring14.<strong>_  
><em><span><strong>Contest Question: Where is your favorite place to spend fall break?<strong>_  
><em><span><strong>Review, Tweet me, PM me. (Please tweet me!)<strong>_  
><em><span><strong>Verse: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope<strong>__**." -Romans 15:13**_  
><em><strong>HeI<strong>_


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